Utah Utes basketball: Utes can't piggyback on Smith's Bay Area magic

BERKELEY, Calif. — Over here in the Bay Area, the focus for most sports fans Saturday was on the San Francisco 49ers, who moved to the NFC championship game with a thrilling victory behind former Utah quarterback Alex Smith.

However, Smith's magic didn't carry over to the Utah basketball team Saturday night at Haas Pavilion, where the Utes were crushed by Cal 81-45.

The loss was the Utes' fourth by 30 or more points this year and eighth by 20 or more as they dropped to 4-13 on the season and 1-4 in Pac-12 play. Meanwhile the Bears improved to 15-4 overall and 5-1 in league play, which puts them in a tie with Stanford for first place.

Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak said he didn't want to "make a big deal" of another big loss for his young team.

"This isn't one of those times where we need to make a big definition, the ship is sinking kind of thing," Krystkowiak said. "It is what it is — they are a markedly better basketball team than we are at this juncture and they played like it. We don't have much room for error."

The Ute coach did acknowledge that his team "didn't play with the same intensity" as it has in recent games and gave credit to Cal and his former coach Mike Montgomery.

"They are one of the top teams in the league, if not the top team," he said. "They defend, they've got size … in every facet of the game they outplayed us."

Ute guard Chris Hines agreed with his coach about the intensity, saying, "It was a lack of defensive intensity. We didn't come out as strong as we needed to, we got in a hole and couldn't get our heads up."

As it has been in so many games this year, a big difference was in how often the ball went in the hoop for each team.

While the Utes could only manage 34.7 percent from the field, the Bears burned the basket for 59.6 percent and made all eight of their free throws.

Josh Watkins led the Utes in scoring again with 15 points, but he could only sink 5 of 14 shots from the field and missed all three of his 3-point tries. He also turned the ball over five times, while getting just three assists.

Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said his team tried to key on Watkins since "he has the ball in his hands most of the time" and was the Utes' leading scorer.

"I thought we did a good job on Watkins particularly in the first half and that took the wind out of their sails," Montgomery said.