As the University of Utah basketball team finished practice late Friday afternoon at the Huntsman Center, Craig Smith gathered his team at midcourt.
Once the second-year head coach had everyone’s attention, he made a good point in regard to his team’s season-opener on Monday night against Long Island University (9 p.m., Pac-12 Mountain).
Seventeen-year NBA veteran Rod Strickland will make head coaching debut for the Sharks.
Strickland is a former assistant coach under Orlando Antigua at South Florida from 2014-17, but that is the extent of his experience in a coaching capacity. He has never been a head coach, nor is he coming from the collegiate ranks. Most recently, Strickland served as the director for the G-League professional path program.
In a move that drew nationwide attention in college basketball circles, Strickland was hired by LIU in late June, the same day it fired former head coach Derek Kellogg.
Here is the concern for Utah in what would otherwise be a manageable, vanilla opener. There is no film of a Strickland-coached team, because he’s never coached one. So how are the Utes supposed to prepare for this particular opponent?
“I’ve been doing this, this is year 12 as a head coach, 27 years, and I don’t ever recall being in this situation,” Smith said. “I’m sure it’s happened for other people, but very rarely. Very rarely do you have a guy that either hasn’t been a head coach, or didn’t come directly from the college ranks.
“It’s very difficult. We have to do the best we can with personnel. We have to be very locked in to their personnel. It’s a personnel game.
Added senior forward Marco Anthony: “The one thing we do know is who’s on that team, so it’s easy to find film personnel-wise. We’re going to look at that and try to get the gist of what they’ll do with the talent that they have.”
The opening minutes of Utah’s season will carry some intrigue thanks to the mystery factor of what Strickland and LIU choose to do schematically. Under normal circumstances, Utah having the ability to absorb film from last season would at least give it an idea of what was coming, even if the Sharks walked into the Huntsman Center with new tweaks and terminology to last season’s stuff.
Smith noting that this is a personnel game essentially means Utah is going to have to guard, but also adjust and adapt to whatever LIU throws at the Utes early.
The Sharks open the game by setting a single-wide pindown screen? Figure it out. A step-up screen? Adjust. A double-stagger? Same thing. LIU brings a help-side defender to Branden Carlson on the All-Pac-12 center’s first touch? Figure it out.
“It is what it is, but if we guard our personnel the right way, that should take care of a lot of that stuff, and we have to be able to do what we do,” Smith said. “It is going to be hard, because we don’t know exactly what they’re going to do with their screen-and-roll defense, or their post defense, or how we can attack them the best that we can. We just have to see where it goes and make the appropriate adjustments.”
Utah offering shuttle service to men’s hoops games
Utah on Monday will debut its “Runnin’ Ute Express” free shuttle service to men’s basketball games at the Huntsman Center.
The shuttle service, which will originate from the Guardsman Way tailgate lot and the Broadcast Center Lot on Wasatch Drive, will begin from each lot 90 minutes before tip-off and will run continuously, as demand warrants, until 45 minutes after the game’s conclusion.
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.