“He is so clearly the right person to lead that program, for so many reasons. It’s hard to identify something essential to success that he isn’t prepared to execute on a high level. Intelligence, experience and integrity is a formula for success. … Alex is the friend/person you turn to when you need both the truth and unconditional support. Empathetic toughness and an unwavering commitment to high standards. He’s a home run.”
— Quin Snyder, on new Utah Utes basketball coach Alex Jensen
The bosses atop the University of Utah are doing themselves and their fans a favor by hiring one of their own as their next head basketball coach, not just one of their own, but one of their own who cares about the program’s single most important thing in a way they can neither match, nor imagine.
There’s more to the story, more advantages to bringing former Ute player Alex Jensen in to run Utah’s basketball shop than just that — as former Utah Jazz and current Atlanta Hawks head coach Quin Snyder, a man for whom Jensen worked as a Jazz assistant, indicated up top … the acumen, the NBA experience and ties, the personal touch, the institutional familiarity and connection — but it’s a meaningful place to start.
As much as drawing breath into his lungs, Jensen, over his time at Utah in the mid- to late-1990s, and even long before that, absolutely had to do something Ute hoops has pretty much forgotten how to consistently do over the past decade. Yeah, win. Before anyone dismisses that as a worn-out, disposable, no-duh kind of cliche — I mean, what coach doesn’t want to win? —stop to measure the breadth and depth of Jensen’s commitment to that end.
When the man played at Utah, as the Utes made it to the NCAA championship game against Kentucky in 1998, if you can wipe away so much losing in more recent years to recall the glory of that achievement, the Utes led that game by 12 points at the half. They were on track to conquer all of March Madness and then … and then they lost.
As a leader on that team, a 6-foot-7 forward who played a significant role on both ends of the floor, Jensen simply couldn’t abide that result. The Utes had flown through the tournament, beating opponents experts mistakenly thought were superior to them, soaring into the final game. But that wasn’t enough for Jensen. The ultimate outcome burned a hole in his competitive soul.
A full year later — and probably 27 years on — he couldn’t be satisfied with what transpired. It made him sick in the heart and the head.
“It bothers me,” he said. “I still haven’t watched the second half of that game. When I think about how close we were … I’ll never forget it. Some say, ‘You can’t complain about making it all the way to the championship game.’ But it wasn’t good enough. I can’t explain why. … We were 20 minutes away from the title. That’s how it’s stuck in my mind. For a long time, I couldn’t go a minute without thinking about it. I still do. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity … missed.”
Rick Majerus, Utah’s coach at the time, said back then he took a small bit of twisted comfort in the aftermath of that defeat in knowing that there was one other human on the planet who plumbed the same depths of despair that he did. Uh-huh, You Know Who.
“I watched Al that night,” Majerus said. “He was crestfallen. He was inconsolable. I didn’t get to sleep until the sun was coming up. And I knew Al wasn’t sleeping, either.”
(Kyusung Gong | AP) Dallas Mavericks assistant coach Alex Jensen, third from left, watches as Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic shoots a free throw during the second half of an NBA basketball game Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025, in Los Angeles.
Said Jensen: “I don’t know where it comes from, but I feel a sense of urgency in basketball. When you get beat, it eats you up. I hate it. That’s just a part of who I am. It’s like you would rather die than lose.”
He’s the only player or coach I ever heard utter those last six words.
But if you want your basketball team to win, you want your program re-energized and resurrected, you might not mind having a guy who feels that way leading the charge, regardless of how out-of-whack and warped that stance might be.
In Jensen’s case, it’s a real thing.
Another example: When he was a young kid growing up in Centerville, as a sophomore on Viewmont High School’s team, he and his ‘mates lost in the prep playoffs to Alta. His brother, Andy, a senior on that same squad, went home and ordered up a pizza. What did Alex do? He suffered, stomping down to his bedroom, slamming the door, turning the lights out, and sitting in the dark.
“We didn’t see him for a few days,” Andy said all those years ago. “His freshman year at Utah, he was asked to write a paper in English class about the worst experience of his life. That loss was it.”
So there’s that, that kind of drive. But there’s the other stuff, too. Jensen has a record as an effective, efficient, erudite coach.
Utah, a once-proud basketball school, has for two decades wanted to find a mentor who could replicate the sort of success Majerus conjured. They wanted Majerus, without the mercurial Majerus baggage that led to his leaving the program in 2004. Leaving is to say forced out. The powers that be at Utah loved the winning, but loathed the Majerus behavior that became untenable.
Well. It turns out that Majerus and Jensen were mostly of one mind, basketball-wise, but pretty much opposites when it came to personal demeanor. Big Rick adored Jensen as a player, he being perhaps the only player at Utah left almost entirely unscathed by the coach’s sometimes harsh and bombastic and cruel criticisms.
“I’m in love with the kid,” Majerus once said of Jensen. “I’d be hard-pressed to find anything I don’t like about him.”
“It’s because they think the same way,” said Andy, who played at Utah before transferring to Weber State. “If a coach and a player were ever meant to be together, it’s those two.”
When Jensen got into coaching, he did so for a time with Majerus during a subsequent stop at Saint Louis University. He moved thereafter to the NBA, first becoming the head coach of the G League’s Canton Charge, where he won that league’s coach of the year honors. He eventually became Snyder’s top assistant with the Jazz, a colleague and a confidante, but also a developer of talent. Jensen was instrumental in the growth of Rudy Gobert. Following that, he worked as an assistant with the Dallas Mavericks.
And now, he returns home to his Utes, where his care factor still burns hot, same as it was back when he was donning the crimson jersey, using the force of his gravitational, attitudinal pull to motivate his teammates.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jazz assistant coach Alex Jensen works with Rudy Gobert, during practice at the Zions Bank Practice Center, on Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021.
It requires bits and pieces of speculation to figure why Jensen is ready at present to leave the pro ranks to make the journey back to his alma mater, but not huge chunks. At one time, he was a candidate for a number of NBA head coaching jobs, but was never hired. Snyder guessed that the time wasn’t right when Jensen’s name bubbled up as previous Ute head coaching opportunities opened. Now, the timing is bang on, with his oats already sewn in the NBA, with attractive pro jobs in short supply. Jensen can run his own college program, and make substantial money doing so. Many have witnessed the success — and the sweet paycheck — former NBA assistant Kevin Young is having and getting at BYU, on the floor, in the locker room, in recruiting, in the bank account, and understood that Utah wants a similar effect.
At his personal core, Jensen is the opposite of the ridiculously competitive, fierce player he was at Utah. Off the court, he’s just an unassuming, regular dude, but that’s part of his appeal. Majerus once described him as “kind, accommodating, thoughtful, comfortable.”
But his brother also said, “Mentally, he’s the toughest [person] I’ve ever seen.”
Jensen, then, is basketball’s version of an angel and an assassin.
As Snyder put it, “he’s so clearly the right person to lead that program, for so many reasons.” Foremost among them, he’ll win big at Utah or he’ll, figuratively at least, die trying.
