The Utes finished their run of six games in the first two weeks with a flourish.
Utah bounced back from its first loss of the season with a double-digit win in which the Utes made more than half of their field goal attempts, had nine players score and held their opponents to less than 40 percent shooting.
Senior forward David Collette registered his first 20-point performance of the season with a game-high 24 points on 11-of-12 shooting to pace Utah to an 85-69 win against Eastern Washington in front of an announced 13,264 in the Jon M. Huntsman Center on Friday night.
Junior guard Sedrick Barefield added 12 points, while Donnie Tillman chipped in with 10 points off the bench as the Utes improved to 5-1.
“I do like the fact that we responded,” Utes coach Larry Krystkowiak said. “It’s not easy to come home after five days in Vegas, even though you’re playing at home. But you know, Eastern Washington was in the same category. … Guys were sucking a little bit of air, but, defensively, I was really happy.”
Collette, a 6-foot-10 low-post scoring weapon, had plenty of motivation after coming out on the short end of a one-on-one matchup against UNLV’s highly-touted freshman Brandon McCoy in Wednesday night’s loss in the championship game of the MGM Resorts Main Event.
McCoy scored 26 points and grabbed 17 rebounds, while Collette got held to nine points and two rebounds in an 85-58 loss on Wednesday. Collette had almost 48 hours to stew before Friday’s tip.
“I just didn’t feel like I played real great last game and just kind of had a chip on my shoulder,” Collette said. “I’ve been thinking about it after the game and so I just came out ready to play this game.”
Collette’s 24 points came in just 18 minutes. He did all of his damage around the basket with an array of post moves, reverse layups, dunks and finding open spaces where teammates could feed him on the move towards the rim.
“They couldn’t guard him,” Barefield offered in summation with a shrug and a smile.
The Utes started this night off by making 7 of 10 from the floor. Collette asserted himself early by making each of his first four field goal attempts. The Utes’ hot shooting helped build a 32-17 lead with 6:12 remaining in the half, and Collette had scored just three fewer points (14) than the entire Eagles team.
Parker Van Dyke’s fast-break layup followed by Tyler Rawson’s 3-pointer from the top of the key gave the Utes a 20-point advantage, 37-17, with 5:20 left in the half. The Eagles cut it to 14 points, but the Utes scored six straight and capped that run with a Rawson no-look bounce pass to Collette for layup to make it 44-24 with less than two minutes left in the half.
The Utes carried a 46-27 lead into halftime. Collette scored 18 first-half points, and the Utes went 5 of 11 on 3-point attempts.
“We have to have an interior presence to win some games against good teams,” Krystkowiak said.
In the second half, the Utes led by as many as 33. Collette’s dunk with 16:57 pushed their lead past the 30-point margin for the first time. Collette played just five minutes in the second half.
The Utes will be off until they host Hawaii on Saturday, Dec. 2.
