After a testy, one-year hiatus, BYU and Utah are playing again. Here's how the rivals were brought back together

Provo • The message left on Dave Rose’s voicemail in mid-December, 2015, from University of Utah basketball coach Larry Krystkowiak was so stunning that the BYU basketball coach at first thought it was a prank.

But it wasn’t. Calls to the Utah basketball offices, which were returned by people other than Krystkowiak, later confirmed it. Utah wasn’t coming to Provo in 2016, as had been agreed.

“This doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” Rose said back on Jan. 6, 2016, about a month after freshman guard Nick Emery had punched Utah senior guard Brandon Taylor in the final seconds of the Cougars’ 83-75 loss to the Utes at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City. “It’s ridiculous and …. shocking. I’m totally surprised.”

Krystkowiak said in a news conference a day later that the rivalry had become too “toxic” and “unsafe,” and carried the “potential for serious injury,” so he thought a “cooling off” period was in order. He said he would rather pay the $80,000 buyout clause than play the contracted 2016 game in Provo.

So the Utes and Cougars did not play last year for the first season since World War II halted the series during the 1943-44 season, interrupting a rivalry that began in 1909. They will meet for the first time since Dec. 2, 2015 on Saturday night (9 p.m. MT, ESPN2) at the Marriott Center.

What kind of reception does Krystkowiak expect?

“It doesn’t really matter to me,” he said Tuesday. “I am sure it’s not going to be warm and fuzzy and flowers and chocolates, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t really care.”

In the months after Krystkowiak’s decision, which was supported by Utah athletic director Chris Hill but mostly ridiculed by the local and national media alike, Rose and his staff steamed, and BYU fans derisively came up with a new nickname for the “other” Coach K: “Coach $80K.”

“I’ve been doing this for 32 years,” Rose said at the time, “and have had hundreds of agreements on games, verbal agreements, handshake agreements, contractual agreements, and this is the first time I’ve had one not fully executed.”

Rose and his staff believed that Krystkowiak used the Emery-Taylor incident as a pretext to jettison the series.

A similar situation occurred in 2010, BYU coaches argued, when Utes guard Marshall Henderson punched BYU guard Jackson Emery. Rose blew it off at the time as one individual player letting his emotions get the best of him.

The fallout from Utah’s decision to bail on the game eventually included a legislative audit of the University of Utah’s athletic department, a sweeping probe that found no major violations or financial improprieties, just a few minor issues. The audit also said that the $80,000 buyout was paid from school funds, and not directly by Krystkowiak.

Utah administrators, however, disputed that, insisting that Krystkowiak was repaying the funds to the U. in four installments of $20,000 over four years, the first of which was funneled through his charity, the Krystko Foundation.

In July of 2016 — before the audit was completed — the schools agreed to resume the rivalry, and a new three-game series was announced. The second game will be played at Vivint Smart Home Arena next year as part of the Beehive Classic, and the third game will be at the Huntsman Center in 2019.

Krystkowiak said it took “some convincing” for him to agree to resume the series. When asked who stepped in, the coach replied: “I am not going to get into it. I just know we’re playing again, and we’ll leave it at that.”

On Thursday, the Utah coach said he still doesn’t think BYU and Utah need to play every year.

At least one former state lawmaker is taking some credit for getting the rivals back together. In a post on Facebook, former state Sen. Steve Urquhart, now a global ambassador for the U., said he called U. President David Pershing and BYU President Kevin Worthen and asked if they would meet with him on middle ground — Thanksgiving Point in Lehi — and discuss the matter.

“It actually was the first time the two presidents had met,” Urquhart wrote. “…I proposed to them the idea of playing at a neutral site [Vivint Arena] in an all-Utah tournament early in the season. They liked the idea. We shared it with others, and the conversation/direction helped put the relationship back on track.”

However it happened, the 258th meeting — BYU leads the series 129-128 but Utah has won the last three — is on. Emery won’t be in the building, having withdrawn from school a day before the Cougars’ opener. In a blog posted on Monday, Emery said he plans to return to BYU, so theoretically he could play in the Huntsman Center in 2019.

He will probably get the same kind of greeting that Krystkowiak expects Saturday.

Emery told The Tribune in October that he sent some text messages to Krystkowiak and Taylor in July apologizing again for the punch and his behavior that night, and the coach confirmed those exchanges on Tuesday.

Krystkowiak also acknowledged publicly for the first time the real reason why he wanted to discontinue the series. Emery and BYU apparently weren’t apologetic enough for his liking, even though Emery did send out a public apology the day after the punch.

“To be honest with you, if [the texted apology] had happened a little bit earlier — this is no disrespect to him — we wouldn’t ever had taken any time off,” Krystkowiak said. “I was waiting to see what would take place before I kind of got my undies in a bunch and wanted to put an end [to] it.”

Undies in a bunch? BYU fans could have a field day with that one. Saturday, they will finally get the chance.