Men's basketball free falling

In Boise, Idaho for the season opener Utah Valley played to the bitter end before losing to Boise State in overtime 72-71. In the rematch Utah Valley lost control and after leading at halftime and fell 87-77.
It was Utah Valley's (3-7) fifth loss in a row and the team has as many losses as last year's team had all season.
Again Ryan Toolson led the way for the Wolverines with 22 points and Jordan Brady had a career high 20 to go with eight rebounds but the Wolverines were burned by turnovers and second-half 3-point shooting by the Broncos.
Reggie Larry led Boise State with 18 points and had a couple nice dunks in the second half. A half where Boise State shot 5-for-7 from behind the arc and 60 percent from the field.
Although Toolson had 22 points it came on just 5-for-16 shooting and 2-for-10 from 3-point range.
Teams know Toolson is a scorer and they buckle down on him defensively. Last David Heck and Matt Peterson could take some pressure off and score as well but this year Toolson is the major threat offensively for the Wolverines by far and although he is still getting his points it is coming on a lot more shots. He also played every minute of the game.
Toolson and Brady had little help offensively as Richard Troyer was 3-for-9 and 1-for-6 from 3-point range. Josh Olsen shot 1-for-8 and 0-for-3 from the 3-point line.
And as poor of an offensive game as several players had, the Wolverines were still in it if they would have held possesion and played a bit tighter defense. The Broncos shot 50 percent for the game to Utah Valley's 41 percent.

Other notes
Center Joe Walker was another Wolverine haveing a nice game shooting 4-for-5 from the field before exiting because of a hand injury. Walker came up holding his hand after a Wolverine foul. He stayed in the game for a few minutes but after he threw down a two-handed dunk midway through the second half he called for a sub and never came back in. Boise pulled away for good in what was a close ball game and led by six to 10 points until the end.

New floor, no good?
Utah Valley is 0-2 on the new floor it shares with the Flash. While there was many complaints about the old floor and all the dead spots at least the team was winning. Utah State was the team's only loss at home last year. This already two now.
The women's team will try its hand for the first time on the new floor on Saturday. Maybe they can do better after two straight losses.

Women's soccer recruit named MVP

Utah Valley's soccer team has a number of young players that could turn the program into something great very soon.
Coach Brent Anderson is going to add another strong class of young players to his team next year with this year's class 4A MVP, given by the Salt Lake Tribune, Brianne Larsen from Orem High School headed to Utah Valley next year.
Larsen, a defender, helped the Tigers win the 4A state title by shutting out Highland 4-0. Larsen and the rest of her team gave up 13 goals all season and recorded 11 shutouts. Orem allowed only two goals in the state tournament with Larsen leading the defense.
A number of other Utah Valley recruits made All-State teams. Allison Noot of South Summit made the 2A first team as a goalie, Kaitlyn Thomas made the 4A first team as a midfielder, Cristy Brian, a defender from Davis High, made the 5A second team, Noelle Sanders, a defender from Timpanogos High School made the 5A second team. Kelsey Kimball, a defender from Timpview, made the 4A second team, and Jamie Lyons, a forward from Orem made the 4A second team.
The link to the article about the soccer MVPs is http://www.sltrib.com//ci_7690179?IADID=Search-www.sltrib.com-www.sltrib.com.

NCAA review and conference talk

With the NCAA in town for an evauluation a few weeks back the athletic department did what it could to make sure things are in order.
Although it is an athletic commitee, other areas of the school were looked at. The NCAA talked to administrators and professors to find out what the relationship is between athletics and education as well as looking at facilities and other things in the athletic department.
The NCAA gives out three grades, fail, pass with exceptions, and pass.
A.D. Mike Jacobsen was sure the school would pass but wondered what exceptions would need to happen before the end of the school's provisional status.
He got half of it right, the school passed and with no exceptions. People said that doesn't happen very often.
With the review and the pass out of the way UV is more interesting for conference pursuers. Here is a list of possible conferences UV thought they would have a shot at and the realistic possibilities, Jacobsen said:


Big West: Not very likely at all. The school presidents want to turn this conference into a California only conference.


Big Sky:They want a school with football and if they said UV was in if they start playing football in three years then UV would take it in an instant. And football would be on the way.


Mid-Conn/Summit: They want out of Utah and want Southern Utah out already. It's just not going to happen and wouldn't be good for UV anyway no sweat about that loss.



Sunbelt: UV men just beat their champ in hoops but they have Denver and don't want to go any farther west as it is. Again no big deal here the travel would be brutal anyway, not that going to play all these sorry teams back east right now isn't. But Sunbelt is a conference the school would be completely happy to be in.


WAC: Jacobsen said this is the conference that has spoken to him the most. They are looking to expand to a non-football school also so every other sport can have travel partners besides football which they want to stay at nine so they can have a bye week rotated through the season. Of course Boise State and Fresno State want out of the WAC and into the Mountain West and that may open up a bigger possibility for UV. Although it still seems a stretch right now that UV would get into that conference it is the best possibility right now besides the Big Sky. If UV did take a spot in the WAC it would be great for the sports they have football would most likely be out of the picture at UV for a very long time.
They would have to play D-I football and meet all the requirments for that plus build a 30-40,000 seat stadium, plus it would cost more than half te budget right now to play every season.


Passing the NCAA stuff was great and conference affiliation will be even better for the school especially if it is the WAC.