Who? The Runnin' Utes of Utah. Or just Utes for short.
What? Utah is one of the few schools with permission to use the name of a local tribe (perhaps because the Ute tribes felt it was a bit less offensive than Redskins). Swoop is a red-tailed hawk, which is local to Utah.
Where? Salt Lake City, Utah.
When? March 12th, in Las Vegas, Nevada, which I've run out of jokes about, sorry.
Why? Because they won the Mountain West conference tournament.
How? Freshman Michelle Plouffe had 24 of her team's 52 points, and Utah held off TCU in overtime, 52-47.
Surprise? Absolutely. Kim Smith and Leilani Mitchell didn't walk through that door, and the Utes stumbled to a 7-9 finish in conference, five games out of third and eight out of first.Who's driving this thing, anyway? Anthony Levrets, since 2009. Sort of. He's an interim coach while long-time coach Elaine Elliott takes a sabbatical. Though I thought it was only supposed to be one year, and they're listing it as two.
RPI: 133
SOS: 99
Record: 18-16 (7-9)
Best win: TCU (N)
Worst loss: Utah State (H)
Notable results: Three exhibition games make it hard to pick out a notable result from this schedule. Home losses to Washington and Arkansas are not promising.
Three-point sniper Iwalani Rodrigues leads this team in scoring, with 14.7 points and a gaudy 44.4% three-point percentage. Junior guard Janita Badon and freshman forward Michelle Plouffe also score in double digits, with Plouffe adding 7.3 rebounds per game. I worry about this team's depth- in their tournament final, in their fourth game in five days, they only went six deep.