PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — The losing trend continues for Utah men’s basketball.
Coming off the team’s first loss of the season to Cal Poly last week, the Runnin’ Utes showed a bit more life late Tuesday night in the semifinal round of the Acrisure Classic Series against Grand Canyon, but it was all Antelopes in the end.
Grand Canyon used an 11-3 run to open the game, built up a 12-point lead in the opening minutes of the second half, and maintained to secure a 68-58 win in a game the Antelopes controlled from start to finish.
Utah (5-2) made it a game early on after erasing the hot Grand Canyon (4-2) start, and eventually got a go-ahead bucket from Jacob Patrick, who hit back-to-back 3-pointers and then a driving floater midway through the first half.
After a high-tempo and high-energy start to the game, the two teams leveled out a bit and went on a simultaneous three-minute scoring drought, while mostly trading baskets for the duration of the half. Grand Canyon quickly took control in the second half and maintained a double-digit lead against a Utah team that couldn’t break through the defense.
Even during a near six-minute scoring drought by the Antelopes, Utah could get no closer than cutting the deficit to 6 before Grand Canyon built up another double-digit lead, where it stayed for the duration of the night.
Grand Canyon locked up Utah guard Terrence Brown, and frustrated any and all attempts by him to factor into the offense as the team’s leading scorer. Brown finished with 9 points on 3-of-11 shooting, while forcing him into four fouls.
But Brown wasn’t alone, though he was the main focus of the Antelopes. Utah shot just 41% from the field and was 61% from the free-throw line.
Surprisingly, though, Grand Canyon shot worse than Utah from the field at 40%, including 0-of-10 from the 3-point line. But the Antelopes made up the difference off Utah’s 14 turnovers, which the Antelopes converted into 17 points on the other end.
In the loss, Utah showed out better on the rebounding front — an area of struggle as of late — and outrebounded Grand Canyon 40-33, but the team’s poor shooting and turnovers ultimately doomed a comeback.
Utah was led in scoring by Don McHenry, who finished as one of only two Utes player in double figures with 14 points and three rebounds in the loss. Keanu Dawes added 10 points and 12 rebounds in another double-double performance.
Grand Canyon had three players finish with double-digit scoring, with Jaden Henley topping the scores with 18 points and three rebounds, and Efe Demirel adding 12 points and five rebounds in the win.
With the loss, Utah will play Ole Miss — rated No. 36 in KenPom — Wednesday (10 p.m. MST, CBSSN) in the third-place game of the multi-team event, with Grand Canyon moving on to the winner bracket against an Iowa team who is receiving votes in the latest Associated Press Top 25 rankings.
Coming into the season, a game against Ole Miss could have served as a resume builder for a potential NCAA Tournament bid, but Utah is far from that conversation as the team now drops back-to-back games against sub-100 ranked teams.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
