The Air Force Falcons (14-2) were the surprise story of the Mountain West Conference coming into Monday's game against Utah, and the story continued as the Falcons defeated the Utes in Colorado Springs, 62-49.
Unlike the New Mexico game, where the Utes were forced to come back from a huge deficit, the Falcons took the lead from the start, but never ran away with the game until the very end.
It was neck and neck, but it was always the Falcons that had control. While the Utes made small runs to tie up the game, in the end, the Utes defeated themselves.
Utah committed 20 turnovers, and all of them seemed to come at critical points in the game, where the Utes could have gotten over the hump and taken the lead.
In the first half, the Utes relied on Tim Frost, who scored 8 of his 13 points in the first half.
Even though the senior came through with 13 points, the Utes didn't have one player who broke out and gave them the offensive effort the team needed.
Instead, the physical defense of Air Force took the Utes out of their offense and Utah could not get a tempo on either offense or defense.
Andrew Bogut, who was the only player to really come through against New Mexico, only finished with four points, and was not effective at all.
The Falcon defense also limited Nick Jacobson to only 10 points with a stiff zone. Air Force was physical with Jacobson and made him take tough shots all night.
Sophomore Richard Chaney and freshman Josh Olsen hit big threes, but were not enough of a threat to establish any sort of presence for the team.
While the Ute offense was struggling, the Air Force offense was consistent and the Falcons made baskets when they had to.
Down the stretch, forward A.J. Kuhle was huge and he finished with a game-high 17 points.
Not only did Kuhle outscore any other Ute player, but Tim Keller and Nick Welch also did the same as they scored 16 and 13 points, respectively.
Air Force did not make many mistakes, especially near the end of the game, and the team only had nine turnovers, which was the key difference in the game.
The Utes had a great chance in the end to take over the game, but a big turnover by Tim Drisdom, as he was driving down the lane, finished any chance for the Utes to win the game.
Any conference loss is huge, but this one was crucial for the Utes, because now the team is two games back of the Falcons and at this point, Air Force has the tiebreaker.
Utah has now lost two-straight conference games, but will return to the comfort of the Huntsman Center for the next three conference games against BYU, UNLV and San Diego State.
akudiya@chronicle.utah.edu
