I don't expect a win Wednesday
 

Utah is a crazy team. They play with and/or beat really good teams and lose to crappy teams.

If you had to bet on which team Utah shows up with on Wednesday, based on the past 10 years of BYU vs UU games in the Huntsman Center, what do you think?

Neville has game of his life, Bryant is 6/6 from the 3 point line, they get production from guys they didn't even know they had on the bench. Utah by at least 12.

How could you not pick Utah? We haven't won there in 13 years.

I'm expecting a loss for the Utes. I just don't think they can beat the Y this year in either gym.

You obviously haven't seen us play on the road this year (UNM win nothwithstanding). We are losing to teams from Beaumont, Texas for crying out loud.

The Utes lost to Albany at the Huntsman Center. I think that tops (or bottoms) a loss in Beaumont.

Utes also defeated AFA. So I agree that the Utes win by 12, unless we get consistent production from Plaisted, Young and one other. If BYU limits turnovers and does well in the rebounding department, BYU has a chance, but limited.

I think it's easier to predict how we'll play. Keena and Plaisted will play well, but one may be in foul trouble. At least a couple of our shooters will be on, but it won't be any better than avg from 3 point line.

The big question is how Utah will play. So I would never say we don't have a chance or even that it's a small chance. We're a better team. I just don't know what Utah team will show, but history of this game says they'll have one of their best games of the season when we show up in Huntsman Center.

I don't expect a win either. Utah seems to play pretty well against the good teams and BYU is a good team.

Not to mention that I guarantee you, somehow, someway in the first 3-5 minutes Plaisted will be on the bench cause in that atmosphere Giacoletti will insist the players run the offense through Nevill this game and the refs will nail Plaisted early. I can see it coming from a mile away.

I expect a double digit loss.

Are you blaming the refs already? ;) Or are you saying that Plaisted will foul Neville?

Running the offense through Neville early will be the smart thing to do for the very reason of getting Plaisted in foul trouble. It's good strategy. But then, getting the ball to Neville is harder for the Utes because they're better at throwing it away.

I still say BYU wins and my guess is that it will be by 10-16 points.

It's completely irrelevant how long it's been. KVH and Justin Weidauer aren't playing in this game.

The length of the winning streak is irrelevant because Rick Majerus is not on the sidelines.

It's nice to see that that fat piece of crap is still not abusing any more college age kids. He's a crappy TV analyst too.

Such class displayed here. I don't like what he's done to lots of kids either, but I won't sink to that level.

You're wrong about his being an analyst. The guy knows more about the game than almost anyone. I'd guess you're opinion of his ability as an analyst is tainted by your personal feelings of him.

The best thing the SL Trib ever did was help bring about his middle-of-the-night departure to Santa Barbara to avoid the full frontal assault expose they were about to do on him.

Ah yes, the ultimate grudge-holder, Monson. No surprise that he's a BYU grad, is it?

Majerus was a great coach. He is an ok analyst IMVHO. He is a really good analyst if you are a hoops junkie. Or just a junkie.

Please. It was a lot more than Monson behind this one.

Completely irrelevant, my eye. A 13-year streak is as relevant as it gets. It means Utah always plays well in this game.

You're right. Kinehack too. Another master of grudges.

My question is: How do you know about this? Did Brandon Gurney tell you what he found in Monson's garbage cans?

I've got multiple connections in the media. You do the math.

I can say that I have multiple connections as well. It doesn't make it so.

I'm not saying that Majerus didn't do rotton things - I'm just pointing out the fact that Majerus wouldn't kiss the local media's ass and Monson made it his goal in life to get rid of Majerus because Monsin is a grudge-holding, weasely, little piss-ant who thinks he should be treated as someone who matters.

After Majerus and the UofU attacked the SL Trib over the Lance Allred story, the SL Trib decided they had finally had enough. They called a meeting where they decided they were going to blow the lid off of everything they knew about the stuff that had gone on at the U with Majerus and they were going to dig to see if they could find even more dirt on him.

Majerus caught wind of this and literally fled in the middle of the night to keep the SL Trib from carrying through.

I'm guessing that the due diligence USC did (or a letter was slipped under their door) a couple of years ago when they were in the middle of hiring Majerus is why that ended up falling through; because they found out about some of this.

"Rotten things"?

It depends upon the perspective. Did he say things which aren't proper in our society, LDS that is? Yes. Did he have an ego? Yes, did he go overboard? Yes.

Were the things he did horrible and reasons to hold a grudge on him? Not in my opinion. He was an excellent basketball coach, but some of his grittiness wasn't going to cut it in SLC forever. As a basketball fan, I loved his teams. As a Coug fan, I'm relieved he's gone, because we've had nobody capable of matching him in close games. He knows his stuff better than I will ever know basketball, and IMHO, although crude, he was NOT malicious, though he didn't cater to authority very well.

As I read the tea leaves there was a lot more at play than just the media.

I think Utah's admin turned on Rick because he was no longer dominating. I think Rick went through some changes but my opinion is once Utah had become a top tier MWC program and not the dominating big dawg, which they basically were 200-2004, Hill felt that Rick was not worth the baggage. I would even to go so far as to implicate Hill as being partially involved in whatsoever expose was about to surface as a method of making Rick the bad guy. When Rick was dominating Utah and Hill would defend him to no end, but once Hill decided he could have a similar type of run with a coach that was not so much a prick he made his move.

In fact I can sense from the posts on Utefans that Hill even went as far to try to blame Rick for the morass the program finds itself. Commie Crim has long been a good lackey for the good Doctor and until about halfway through this season's abortion that is being delivered live in SLC he was blaming Rick for the issues more than Giac. Hill is very skilled at turning on his coaches and isolating them when he needs to. The crap about Archibald being fired due to a lack of academic progress was BS as the good doctor would not give Lynn the academic resources he would provide others...He wanted Lynn gone and he made the right choice, but to cloud it all in some higher morality of academic progress was bovine excrement. Another spectacular example is the bullshit forwarded by SeattleUte that Kyle Whittingham was hired because of the enormous importance of the Fiesta Bowl. It goes that Chris Hill could have found a more prepared HC candidate but chose Kyle because the U needed some semblance of continuity or else the biggest game in school history could be jeapordized. Knowing full well that the result might be 4-5 years of mediocrity after the Fiesta Bowl season. This was a subtle way of Chris Hill innoculating himself from any blame for the fact that Kyle does not yet appear to be the HC the Utes, and myself as well as many others, believed he would be.

The point is this..Majerus did rotten things but Utah fans and Chris Hill were fully willing to defend him and live with his warts if he produced late 1990's like success. When the opinion was the U could accomplish the 2000-2004 like success without Rick's warts suddenly the U became higher principle based central.

I am thinking some of those warts might not be so odious anymore.

Chris Hill's next isolation is along the lines that Giac has suddenly changed. He is just somehow not the same guy he was at EWU. The stress, the long shadows cast by the Wasatch Mountains or the jello salad have all combined to steal his brain and render him a different human being than the one the brilliant evaluator of coaching expertise, yea even the good doctor himself, hired.

The good doctor never makes mistakes......

While I don't like how the good doctor, in my opinion, does business. I must admit that Majerus' warts did not offend me as much as many. I loved him as a coach, vulgarity and disgusting behavior understood, and I love him as an analyst. I respect the good doctor but recognize he is not what I am convinced is a fellow of the highest form of ethics. Majerus had his warts, but he was a blue collar in your face honest type of fellow. Dr Hill strikes me as the sly and coy mormon type of white shirt to church and no facial hair but inwardly is a kniving twit.

I think it is cute you are trying to say you are glad he is gone, because he was hurting the players who played for him. You hate him because he won games at Utah, and because he owned BYU. If he did the things he did and lost games, you would have wanted to see him at Utah for another 20 years.

There is a reason your types only look at the bad of Majerus and never at any of the good. You look at the Lance Allreds, but never look at the Andre Millers.

I agree..I always figured that Reid's winning percentage against Rick might explain moreso the Ute fan hatred of him than Utenation's genuine devotion to "class."

Dr. Hill came off looking better than he should have in the contest against Coach Majerus. They both share fault. The departure had to do with the negative press for some of Rick's foibles coupled with two tremendous egos. Dr. Hill didn't enjoy what Coach was allowed to do, and that was part of Coach's undoing. Dr. Hill has an ego as well, so when the opportunity to push one ego out the door, he was all too willing.

The only real class any fans call for is winning. Now if you can win pretty and nice, that's better.

BYU fans, some of the more orthodox, Packer-Benson conservatives, also expect to win like boyscouts.

But "class", whatever that is, is something your team has, but your rival never has.

I know Norm Parrish, long time head coach at SLCC very well.

I mentored under him for 2 years helping to scout opponents and do a variety of responsibilities. Much of which included me being the errand boy going up to the U on many occasions and getting tape, material and variety of other things from the U coaching staff. SLCC does this on occasion with the other D-I programs in the state like Utah State, BYU, Weber.

The stuff that I learned about Majerus, and the rare few times during coaching seminars and other private tape meetings with him....wow....I will say this, Utah got off easy when it came to their NCAA sanctions. Yewt fans will simply look at it as a "Milk and Cookies" type over-reaction from the NCAA in taking away a couple of scholarships and limiting recruiting visits for a short time. I repeat...they got off easy. The stuff he did and got away with was the stuff never shown in the NCAA report and investigation. I repeat....the U got off easy and some of the violations detailed in the report in truth were mild. The ones they never investigated that Majerus thumbed his nose at and never got caught were egregious to say the least.

Dr. Hill deserved better than how Rick was to him the last 2 years he was there. Dr. Hill is a reputable and honest man and some of the things Rick said to him and how he even treated him were beyond despicable.

The truth is Majerus while a GREAT and BRILLIANT teacher, but that is where I end in having anything remotely nice to say about the guy. The older he has got, the more friends he has lost, simply because the way he treats people. He truly has a God Complex. He expects carte blanche in how he's treated, but rarely shows the same in return. Now I admit my interactions with him weren't all inclusive, but I saw enough and heard enough with my own eyes and ears to come to my judgements about the man.

Now I know me being a Y fan, is going to automatically disqualify me from having any Yewt "fan" believe what I wrote. I'm sure they'll start pointing out what a wonderful humanitarian Rick was in helping out kids like Andre, KVH, Afeaki,,,,etc,,etc,,,, and will that I'm just being biased and that's fine for you to think that way.

To be fair: I will say that former Weber State coach Ron Abegglen was no saint either. When it came to dirty pool recruiting wise he was almost as bad as Majerus was.

The good doctor, who is about as much a doctor as you are, is in charge of a ship where the standard bearer program is on the precipice of its worst two year run in history. This type of consistent futility is unprecedented in the annals of Ute hoops history. Perhaps I am too much of a W/L typa guy, but I don't think anyone in the Utah AD comes out ahead of Senor Buttcrack Cleavage the the triangle and 2 defense.

We know that Majerus is a meanie and weird. We all knew that years ago. I never felt the BYU heads' stories of his poor behavior were made up. No light shed on Majerus. However, we know that Chris Hill made a poor assesment of the situation and floundered getting the blame placed on the right soul. It was Majerus undermining the program..now it is that Giac had a lobotomy. Personally, I still think Majerus can coach, but I am not nearly convinced that BCS school presidents will come courting the good doctor anymore.

Objectively, there is no way anyone can conclude the good doctor is better at his trade than the round mound of basketball knowledge found.

Arch...he said and did things which aren't proper in any society, regardless of religion.

Majerus was malicious to many people in many things, in many different ways. He is not a good person.

Well, I've heard different angles on the Lance Allred affair. He was an ass, but he was always an ass to all comers, as he demanded perfection. After your playing years, Coach Majerus was there for the guys. I would prefer him to Bobby Knight any day.

I've never seen or worked with Bobby Knight up close, but based on my interactions with Majerus I'd choose Bobby everytime.

It would be an interesting study to see which coach had a higher rate of attrition over the years.

Chris Jackson's dad told me last year that they knew exactly what they were getting when Chris decided to play for Majerus and if they ahd to do it all over again, Chris, his dad and mom would do it the exact same way. Contrary to porpular opinion, Majerus never hid the fact that playing for him was going to be brutal.

What he did to Lance Allred was incredibly indecent, but what bothered me most about the entire article was that it came to be 2 years after Allred had left Utah. If Monson was any kind of man, he would have written it when it happened. But he's a coward and a grudge holder.

I agree with Goat and Archaea in the sense that Majerus was a top notch coach and that it was much easier to live with it because he was winning. I don't apologize for nor do I defend his behavior because that's my job to do so. I will, however, say that I'm glad he was at Utah because of what he did for Ute basketball. There are few basketball geniuses and he is one of them.

I also agree that Ute fans didn't like Reid because he put a helluva team on the floor. That guy could coach.

Who's the bigger coward? Monson for writing it 2 years later or Majerus for actually being the one responsible for what happened?

Monson, because he only wrote it for only one reason - as a way to take shots at Majerus because Majerus wouldn't ever kiss his ass. It was never about Allred.

Also, Monson is the bigger coward because he never went to Majerus for any kind of rebuttal or even a comment in his own defense. If that isn't cowardly, I don't know what is. You can surely understand that, can't you?

Monson's story was so ridiculously one sided and self serving. Yes, what Majerus did was wrong but Monson conveniently left out that Lance Allred was an asshole as well. There was culpability on Lance Allred's side as well, but that certainly did not help with the personal grudge that Monson had against Majerus so he left it out of the story.

Look Monson is an ass for the way he dealt with the Majerus situation. I still remember Monson writing an article claiming that Majerus wrote a letter in praise of Al McGwire, after his death, as a means to grow his national stature. In a sense Monson used the death of Majerus mentor as a chance to get a shot in against Majerus, with no proof of his claim. Majerus wrote that letter as what it claimed to be, a tribute to his mentor. Monson being the grudge holding ass that he is, decided to use a man's death to go after his enemy. That is as bad as anything Majerus ever did.

Monson has also recently (this past football season) as a means of saying he'll take on anyone and everyone who is a big name in the Utah (state of) sports landscape.

During the weeks after KW said that people who were being critical of him don't know anything about football, Monson proudly beat his chest about taking on Majerus and Karl Malone (though he omitted the fact that neither of them were actually in Utah anymore when he "took them on.")

The other thing he did this past year was imply that KW threatened to beat him up by making the comments that he did. That lasted for a few days but never got any legs so Monson dropped it.

Then again, PK has a point when he says that people shouldn't take on someone who has an unlimited amount of ink at his disposal...ahh the good ole media!

He's just hard to listen to on TV. Obviously he knows more about basketball than all the people registered to post on this site put together. But he's bad on TV.