- Cal Poly defeated Utah 92-85, maintaining a double-digit lead throughout the game.
- Utah struggled defensively, allowing Cal Poly to shoot 56% from 3-point range.
- Cayden Ward led Cal Poly with 28 points, while Utah's Brown scored 29 points.
SALT LAKE CITY — With 2:49 left to play in the first half, Cal Poly controlled a 15-point lead.
That, alone, was enough for a handful of frustrated Utah fans to boo or yell "defense" at the home team in a game where the Mustangs shot 53% from 3-point range and got seemingly anything it wanted on offense in the first half.
Utah's defense was a sieve, but even that may be a generous description to an otherwise porous effort.
To compound issues, Utah was out of sync on the offensive side of the ball and shot 45% from the field, while being outrebounded 17-16 in the opening half. It wasn't until Terrence Brown got a steal late in the half and went for a monstrous dunk on the other end that the Huntsman Center crowd had much to cheer for in the Thursday night game.
On the ensuing Cal Poly possession, Brown took a charge, which elicited an even louder cheer from the fans in an effort to will the team to life seconds before the break.
It didn't work, though, as Cal Poly maintained a double-digit lead for much of the night en route to a 92-85 win on the road. It's the first loss of the Alex Jensen era after starting 5-0 in his first season.
Utah (5-1) had played with fire for much of the season, struggling to put away seemingly inferior teams. But it was Cal Poly (3-3) that finally made Utah pay.
"Just disappointed in how we started out the game," Utah head coach Alex Jensen said. "Defensively, hard to give up 50 points. ... They did a good job tonight. And our guys have got to just individually take the challenge to guard, to play defense.
"Offense will work itself out, but defensively you've gotta guard, individually and collectively, and how do I as a teammate fit into this scheme to what we're doing? Our mind can't be anywhere else."
The Utes threatened late in the game, cutting the deficit to as low as 2 points, but Cal Poly held serve and quickly capitalized on a pair of Utah's mistakes and built up another 12-point lead with just over two minutes left to play on a 12-2 run over a four-minute stretch.
With that, it was all about holding on, and the Mustangs held firm.
Cal Poly had two players top 20 points in the win, with guard Cayden Ward leading the team with 28 points and seven rebounds. Hamad Mousa contributed an additional 26 points, including a perfect 4-of-4 from behind the 3-point line, and three rebounds.
As a team, the Mustangs shot 56% from behind the arc, connecting on 14 triples, while outrebounding the Utes 42-32 in a near wire-to-wire finish.
"There's no excuse to get outrebounded by 10 tonight," Jensen said. "But, again, give Cal Poly a lot of credit."
"As a whole, we guarded the ball terribly," Brown added. "We could have guarded the ball better and did better with turnovers — really, the same thing I say every time I come in here that we've got to work on."
Utah opened up the second half on a 7-0 run to build off the end of first-half momentum, but Cal Poly made another push and built up a double-digit lead again.
Seydou Traore recorded a block on one end with just over eight minutes left to play, and it turned into a corner 3-pointer and-one by Jacob Patrick on the other end to make it a 73-70 game with 8:07 left.
The two teams traded baskets for a stretch, with Utah getting the deficit down to 2 before Cal Poly usurped its dominance to pull away from the home team.
"I think we kind of eased our way into the game," Jensen said. "In the second half we did a really good job there for a stretch, but at that time, we let them find their groove and confidence, and it dug a hole that was a little too deep for us to get out of."
For another night, Brown led the team in scoring with 29 points on 11-of-18 shooting. He was joined in double figures by Don McHenry (16 points) and Keanu Dawes (10 points) on a night where Utah shot 46% from the field.
