Utah Utes Basketball

The Utah Utes set a Division I men's basketball record for the largest margin of victory in a game featuring two D-I opponents, per the official NCAA March Madness Twitter account:

Utah beat visiting Mississippi Valley State 143-49, led by Timmy Allen's 26 points. Nine Utes scored in double figures, and Both Gach and Rylan Jones each had triple-doubles. 

Per the Elias Sports Bureau (h/t ESPN Stats & Info), Gach and Jones' efforts marked the first time in 20 years a Division I team had two players record triple-doubles in the same game.

Utah closed the first half on a 27-5 run to take a 70-20 halftime lead. A 33-9 run over the first eight minutes of the second half was capped by an Alfonso Plummer three-pointer.

Utah shot 63.3 percent from the field and 50.0 percent from three-point range. The Utes also grabbed 68 rebounds versus the Delta Devils' 28 and dished 41 assists to Mississippi Valley State's 10.

The 0-2 Delta Devils shot just 26.2 percent from the field, but Michael Green fared well with 20 points on 10-of-23 shooting.

The Utes moved to 2-0 after beating Nevada 79-74 in their opener. The team is looking to improve upon last season's 17-14 mark.

The Delta Devils have seen better days, winning the Southwestern Athletic Conference five times, most recently in 2012. The program has fallen on hard times recently, however, going 6-26 last year and starting this season with a 110-74 loss to Iowa State.

The team is led by first-year head coach Lindsey Hunter, who played 17 NBA seasons and won championships in 2002 and 2004 with the Los Angeles Lakers and Detroit Pistons, respectively.

An NCAA Division I committee put the University of Utah men's basketball program on probation for two years and handed down other penalties after the team self-reported recruiting violations in April 2018, per Steve Bartle of 247Sports. 

Bartle reported the committee's findings:

"The committee found that an associate head coach coordinated with a local community college's men's basketball head coach to get a high school prospect to the university's campus for a visit, that would be paid for by the community college. While the prospect was in the area, he also visited the Utah campus, according to the committee. Since the community college paid for the prospect's visit to the university, the visit was classified as an official visit and caused the university to exceed the number of allowable official visits."

Utah has also incurred a self-imposed $5,000 fine, a few minor recruiting restrictions and a one-year show-cause order for the associate head coach.

The associate head coach in question is Tommy Connor, per Kurt Kragthorpe of the Salt Lake Tribune.

Head coach Larry Krystkowiak provided the following statement, per Bartle:

"While they were inadvertent and unintentional mistakes on our part, and there was never an intent to circumvent any rules, we accept that they were violations and, as the head coach, I am accountable for them. I have always been a strong proponent of protecting the integrity of college basketball and that will not change."

Per Kragthorpe, "the violations stemmed from what a school news release labeled 'a misreading of the NCAA calendar' in the spring of 2018, when Utah’s four full-time coaches (including DeMarlo Slocum, now on UNLV’s staff) visited an out-of-state prospect at his school during a recruiting quiet period."

Kragthorpe also reported that Utah revoked a 2015 "coach-in-waiting" agreement with Connor to eventually succeed Krystkowiak.

"You can't run from the fact that there were NCAA violations committed here," Utah athletic director Mark Harlan told Kragthorpe. "But again, there's a big difference between inadvertent mistakes and perhaps some of the other things we've seen in the country."

The NCAA seemed to acknowledge those sentiments when the NCAA committee revoked a two-game suspension initially handed down, per Emily James of NCAA.org.

After the panel conducted a hearing, "the committee determined the violations were unintentional, limited and not indicative of systemic problems," per James.

The Utes have made the NCAA tournament twice in eight years under Krystkowiak, notably amassing a 53-18 record over the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons. The Utes made the Sweet 16 in the former year.

Utah has earned 11-7 records in Pac-12 play over the past three years and made the NIT twice.