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SALT LAKE CITY — It shouldn't come as a surprise that Utah men's basketball isn't going to turn too many heads early on this season.
Amid an offseason of serious turnover — a change that was felt by both players and the coaching staff — Utah was picked at the bottom of the newly-formed 16-team Big 12, a league that is often considered the toughest basketball conference in the country
What a debut.
"You've got to go earn respect," Utah head coach Craig Smith said. "It tells you something, right? When you're picked last, it tells you something, and so we've got to go out and earn respect."
But much like any coach that publicly says preseason rankings are meaningless, Smith admitted he was "a little surprised" when the rankings were released; however, he understands where everyone is coming from when viewing a program like his ahead of the season.
Utah made a run to the final four in last season's NIT, but lost a majority of the roster that made up that team. In the offseason, Utah welcomed nine new players and added six new members of the coaching staff, including the associated head coach position.
Nobody knows how Utah will look this season.
Last season, the Big 12 sent a record eight teams to the NCAA Tournament. This season, the conference has five of its six teams ranked inside the top 10 of the preseason Associated Press Top 25 rankings, with Kansas as the projected No. 1 team in the country.
To further emphasize the depth of the conference, eight of the 16 teams are ranked inside the top 25 of KenPom's ratings, with the remaining eight — Utah included, and not last — inside the top 90 of all teams.
All of that will make Utah's rise in a talented Big 12 — a conference with a majority of its teams with NIL resources that outpace Utah's current status — all the more difficult.
But Smith said in all of his years coaching — two of which in particular — being picked last has turned out to be "a great omen for us."
"One year we went to the national tournament; the other year, we won the regular season championship," Smith said. "You see all these polls, and polls are always interesting. You can look around at all the different sports right now, and some teams were picked at the top or near the top and are struggling and vice versa. So anything can happen. That's the beauty of sports."
A rise to the top seems unlikely, but Smith hopes his team will be competitive and challenge each opponent for a better spot in the standings at the end of the season. He believes he has a talented enough roster to make some noise this season.
"I don't know that anybody really knows what they have," he said. "I know this is an exciting group to be around. I love coming to the office every day and seeing our coaching staff and our players. I can't wait to get to practice on a day-to-day basis, because this group is a really highly competitive group. We have a lot of versatility.
"It's the deepest team that we've had since we've been here, and so there's a lot of things to look forward to."
It's a team that Smith believes provides more top-to-bottom versatility, a team that communicates well with each other, and has several players that can shoot the ball at a high rate — while providing more physicality on both sides of the ball.
Is that team perfect yet? No, and Smith is the first to admit there's still a need to eliminate turnovers and correct other facets of the game. But it's a roster he genuinely believes that can be competitive in the Big 12 and challenge for postseason play.
That was most evident in a weekend "secret" scrimmage at the Huntsman Center against Nebraska — an NCAA Tournament team last season, though different from that team. The Utes secured a narrow win and "played with a lot of force," Smith said.
The winning results can come this season, Smith said, but it will take every player on the roster believing he can do something to "impact winning."
"There's things that you need to do that impact winning that don't show up in a box score," Smith said, "or maybe don't always get the attention of the fans or the media or whatever, but they do get your teammates attention, and they get the coach's attention.
"We have a team chock full of guys that can make the right decisions. And that was a very big point of emphasis as we recruited these new guys into our program."
Preseason platitudes are about as good as the preseason projections that judge each team, but Smith hopes his team can backup his belief of what they can be this season. That can only be decided on the court in the coming days, though.
For now, Utah remains the biggest underdog of the season in the Big 12. But maybe Smith's "great omen" will continue and the Runnin' Utes will make a big jump.
