SALT LAKE CITY - Delon Wright scored 15 points as No. 11 Utah pulled away from Stanford with a 75-59 victory Thursday night, the Utes' 16th in a row at home.
Dallin Bachynski finished with 13 points, while Jordan Loveridge chipped in 12 and Brekkott Chapman added 12 for the Utes (19-4, 9-2 Pac-12), who opened the second half with a 15-2 run to cruise past the Cardinal.
Anthony Brown led Stanford (16-8, 7-5) with 15 points while Marcus Allen scored a career-high 13. The Cardinal also received 10 points from Chasson Randle, all coming in the second half on a night where the Pac-12’s scoring leader was 2-11 from the field, 0-4 from long distance and 6-7 from the foul line.
Stanford was playing short-handed, with starter Rosco Allen unavailable due to a back injury. Michael Humphrey replaced Allen in the starting lineup, making his first career start and scoring a season-best nine points while grabbing four rebounds in 19 minutes.
Utah shot 49.0 percent overall and converted 20-24 from the free throw line. Stanford connected on 37.7 percent from the field but made only 13-20 from the charity stripe.
Utah closed the first half with a 6-0 run, including two buzzer-beating baskets from Bachynski, to take a 33-27 lead into halftime.
Stanford led 10-4 out of the gate with the help of four offensive rebounds, but Utah responded with a 17-5 run sparked by eight straight points from Chapman.
Trailing by 19 points with 15:11 remaining, Stanford twice cut the deficit to 10 but was unable to get any closer.
The Cardinal concludes its road trip on Sunday, Feb. 15, at Colorado in a 1 p.m. PT tip.
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NOTES: Stanford had its three-game winning streak against Utah snapped. The Utes lead the all-time series 16-11 … Stanford is 2-3 against top-25 teams this season and 11-18 all-time under head coach Johnny Dawkins … Randle entered the game averaging 18.2 points while shooting 49.1 percent against Utah in five career meetings. His first field goal came with 6:23 remaining in the game. Randle was held scoreless in a half for the first time since Dec. 13 against Denver, when he was also scoreless in the first half … Stanford has used eight different lineups this season after using just two combinations last season. Michael Humphrey became the sixth player to make his first career start this season. All four Cardinal freshmen have started at least one game this season … Anthony Brown knocked down three three-pointers, increasing his career total to 194 … Marcus Allen reached double figures in scoring for the third time in five games … The Cardinal has trailed at halftime in four consecutive games.
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Stanford Head Coach Johnny Dawkins
"I didn't think we finished out the half well. I give them a lot of credit. They made some really good plays down the stretch, end of the first half. They took the lead basically the entire half and I give them credit for the plays they made. At the start of the second half, we knew we had to get off to a good start and we didn't. They got off to a really fast start and had an 11-2 run. At that time, we had to claw back at that point. They are a good team. They do a very good job and they executed well tonight."
“They did a good job on Randle. They paid a lot of attention to him. Their defense was really sound. It was just one of those games where you give them credit for how they defended and we move on. It was a tough loss. But every loss is tough in conference."
Utah Head Coach Larry Krystkowiak
“It started with Brandon (Taylor). Kenneth (Ogbe) also had a part in it. Delon, our back court did a really good job at making things hard for Randle. They did the same to Brandon. Stanford did a nice job guarding him. Randle is a guy that’s leading our conference in scoring. He’s a 2000-point scorer. He’s going to be a handful all the time and we were just trying to make him take tough shots and Brandon’s been doing that a lot. He often times guards the best player on the other team in the backcourt. He continues to do a terrific job.”
“The motion offense was really good for us. I haven’t seen our team pass big-to-big passes as well as we did tonight. I think we had four passes where one big passed to another big and it was terrific. Those guys got a little bit contagious. We worked on it a lot in practice and part of this motion offense and where there spacing is. It was fantastic. There were some really good possessions. Stanford did a good job. They were on to a lot of our plays and our calls and were prepared. They did a good job, but we collapsed the defense a little bit. It wasn’t the smoothest night on offense, but I thought the passing was terrific.”
“We’ve got a deep team. Stanford is in a unique situation at the moment where they’ve got some guys at the top of the list with leading the league in minutes, so I think some of that came into play. We were able to stay a little bit fresher. It was a grind-it-out, pretty physical game. It wouldn’t have been an easy game to referee. There were a lot of things going on out on the court. Our guys were able to stay fresher and come off the bench and they’ve been doing that.”