This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Shear away all the hullabaloo, all the peripherals, all the extra dressing and clutter from the biggest game of the century, or whatever, at the Huntsman Center on Saturday night, featuring No. 7 Arizona against No. 13 Utah, and the whole thing came down to the ordinary, to the mundane, to what most run-of-the-mill basketball games hinge on.

The boring, inglorious stuff.

Defense. Rebounding. Shooting percentage. Getting to the line.

And didn't the Utes know it.

Well. Didn't they?

They did. It's just that, for a lot of this game, it appeared otherwise. Actually, the same went for the Wildcats. Throughout, the question could reasonably have been asked: If this is the best college basketball has to offer, then … sorry, it's not much.

Until the game's last minutes, and even then, this thing was not well played. Still, working their way through long stretches that were as ugly as they were big, the Utes had a chance to clutch up at the end and win.

But they couldn't. They couldn't handle enough of the basics to deserve victory, losing 63-57.

Yes, they played defense. But that was about it.

Arizona outrebounded them, 44-35. It shot a better percentage from the floor, 33 percent to 30. It hit 27 of 37 free throws to the Utes' 16 of 21. What else you want to know?

Utah had been on the south end of all those northbound specifics the last time these two teams met, six weeks ago in Tucson. Basically, all the basics had gone haywire in that crushing, with the Wildcats gaining big advantages - 10 percent in shooting, 10 in number of free throws, 21 in rebounds and 18 in points - to have their way.

The Utes had been uncharacteristically slapped down in that game - hard - and let's just say they were determined on Saturday night to show what they had learned - against a team, a program, that was the flagship of the Pac-12. They were, after all, playing for a share of first place with the bellwether in the league's regular season.

It just never materialized.

Both of these very good teams had danced on the edge of greatness for much of the year, at least relative to what the college game offered to this point. Arizona was Arizona and Utah had tooth-punched many of its Pac-12 opponents, especially at the Huntsman. The facts that, in their most recent run-up, Utah at home had made Arizona State look like your company's 40-and-over-rec-league entry and the Wildcats had done the same to Colorado on the road, this was as good as it would get in Pac-12 basketball.

It turned out less than attractive. And it swung on those basics.

Fighting their way through sloppy, inefficient offensive play, the Utes found a way to hang in. The one area of attack where they had an edge was in 3-point shooting, making an unimpressive 7 of 22 bombs. Either way, it wasn't enough to beat the Cats. As Utah has done nearly all season, it played solid defense, and so did Arizona, but attributing so much inefficiency solely to that would be too generous.

Urged on by the biggest, most dialed in home crowd of the year, the Utes fell behind early, 17-8, climbed back to trail by one at the half, took a slight lead in the second, went up 47-41 on a Brandon Taylor 3 with just more than eight minutes remaining, and then, as the difference, either way, stayed within a point or two, slipped at the finish. The shots didn't fall.

Taylor hit another 3 with just under two minutes left, allowing the Utes to gain back a two-point edge, but, after the Wildcats went up by three in the last 20 seconds, Taylor had a deep corner shot blocked. When Utah retained possession, the guard tried to drive baseline and missed. An Arizona rebound and subsequent foul shot sealed the Wildcats' win.

The home loss was Utah's first of the season.

What it meant was this: On their way back to reestablishing themselves as a premier basketball school, the Utes landed as the second-best team in the Pac-12. They'll get a slightly lower seed in the NCAA Tournament now, barring something dramatic at the conference tournament in Vegas. They're not quite as good as they hoped, but they're a whole lot better than most expected. And they still could be a threat in March.

Any team that plays defense like Utah does is dangerous. It would help, at some point, if the Utes could master the other boring basics, too, against a top-drawer opponent. They'll have to in order to exceed expectations from here on out.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.