Utah basketball is writing its own timetable as a Final Four sleeper

The groundwork for the best season of Utah basketball since the heyday of Rick Majerus in the late ‘90s can be traced from the game’s largest footprint to the least known corners of the hoops world. It’s the realization of a massive overhaul that started only four years ago with the program at rock bottom.

Utah was at the precipice of change when Larry Krystkowiak was hired as head coach in 2011, ready to jump from the Mountain West to the Pac-12. In Krystkowiak, the Utes got a basketball lifer who grew up in Montana, briefly played on the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson, and had a season and a half of pro head coaching experience with the Milwaukee Bucks. As soon as he got there, eight players promptly transferred out.

That first year with Krystkowiak was rough. Utah only won six games and finished 3-15 in its new conference. It would have been hard to fault Krystkowiak if it took some time to get the program off the mat. Only three seasons later, he has a team poised to become a trendy sleeper pick to go deep in the NCAA Tournament.

The game Sunday against a talented Washington squad showed just how good this Utah team could be. The Utes didn’t just win, they hammered the Huskies by 21. Utah started the game with a 10-2 run off the opening tip and never looked back, shooting 53.8 percent from the field and making 11-of-18 attempts from three on the night. By scoring 1.324 points per possession, Utah finished with the best offensive performance in a Pac-12 game this season.

Most expected the Utes to be good this year, but things changed in early December when they handed Wichita State its first regular season loss in 35 games. A week later, Utah hung with Kansas in Kansas City before eventually falling by three. The Utes would crush UCLA 71-39 a month after that. The only real lowlight came 10 days ago at the McKale Center, when Arizona blew past Utah in the second half to thump Krystkowiak’s team 69-51.

Teams as good as Utah don’t come together easily, and the same remains true here. To get this team, Krystkowiak had to pluck the younger brother of an NBA veteran out of junior college, lock down the best recruits in the state and convince a little known 7-footer from Austria that going to class in America was a better option than signing a professional contract in Europe. Recruiting success is always fragile in college basketball, and Krystkowiak’s ability to win a few key battles is what has the Utes in the top 10 of the polls for the first time since Andre Miller was running the show in 1999.

Senior point guard Delon Wright is the engine, and one of the best players in the country by any measure. He’s tied for first in win shares, second in KenPom’s Player of the Year standings, top 20 in offensive rating and No. 8 in assist rate. The brother of 10-year NBA veteran Dorell Wright, Delon arrived in Salt Laker City last season after two years in junior college at City College of San Francisco. He’s a tall (6’5), fast lead guard who locks down on defense (No. 28 in the country in steal rate) and has a knack for crafty finishes around the rim.

There’s really only one thing Wright can’t do, and that’s consistently make three-pointers. He’s only attempted 38 on the year, making 12 of them. Utah rarely suffers from spacing issues, though, because at any given time Krystkowiak is trying to surround his star with three reliable threats from deep. It’s why Utah is sixth in the country in three-point percentage this season as a team that knocks down 41.7 percent of its looks from downtown.

Guards Brandon Taylor and Dakarai Tucker can get hot in a hurry. Tucker has been up and down this year but never lacks confidence, draining 7-of-8 shots and 4-of-5 threes in the win over Washington. Taylor is the reliable outside threat next to Wright in the backcourt Utah needs. He’s taking 4.5 three-pointers per game this season, and is knocking them down at a 46.5 percent clip.

The key in any spacing-based offense is the big men, and that’s where Utah really shines. As a state, Utah isn’t thought of as a hoops hotbed, but the roster has two locals at power forward who have helped key the program’s resurgence: junior Jordan Loveridge and freshman Brekkott Chapman.

Loveridge has been a rock for Utah the last two years. As a sophomore, he became one of the best forwards in the Pac-12, averaging 14.7 points and seven rebounds per game. The big improvement in his game this year is his outside shooting. After making only 30.6 percent of his three-pointers last season, he’s now making 49.1 percent on the exact same number of attempts (4.4).

Chapman entered the program this year as the No. 49 recruit in the country out of Roy, Utah. He’s taller and skinnier than Loveridge, and is showing signs that he could be Utah’s go-to player down the road. The freshman is averaging 7.1 points per game this season, shooting 52.8 percent from the field and 50 percent (on 1.3 attempts per game) from three. Again, the ability to put shooters on the floor around Wright is so critical.

In the middle, Utah seems to have cashed in on a lottery ticket in the form of Jakob Poeltl. If Utah doesn’t seem like a breeding ground for basketball talent, consider Poeltl’s native Austria, a country that has never produced an NBA player. That distinction likely won’t hold for long, because Poeltl’s incredible ascent already has him showing up in the first round of mock drafts. The big man is likely to find the guaranteed money of round one if he comes out this year, but he could go even higher in a weaker 2016 draft if he chooses to return to school.

Utah already had a quality 7-footer in Dallin Bachynski, the younger brother of former Arizona State center Jordan Bachynski. Bachynski is a senior and a quality college player, but Poeltl overthrew him in the starting lineup almost immediately. Now Utah has the type of frontcourt depth most teams can only dream about.

The formula for Krystkowiak this season is pretty simple: Let Wright initiate everything, give him kick-out options dotting the three-point line and put a mountain of a man in the middle. The results have been incredible so far, as Utah is up to No. 5 in KenPom’s rankings and has nine players on the roster with a PER of 15 or higher. Defensively, the Utes are up to No. 6 in the country after finishing at No. 36 last season.

Utah gets another crack at Arizona on Feb. 28, this time at home. If things work out, the two will meet in the Pac-12 title game a few weeks after that. The Wildcats made a statement with their win over the Utes, but the conference race is still a long way from being determined.

That sentence in itself is a testament to the work Krystkowiak has done. This team isn’t just ahead of schedule, it’s torn that schedule up and rewritten a new plan on its own timetable. Utah might seem like an anonymous collection of talent buried in a far off portion of the country right now, but it wouldn’t surprise anyone if the Utes used March and early April to introduce themselves to a whole new audience.