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TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Tobe Awaka had 12 points and a career-high 18 rebounds, Koa Peat scored 18 points and No. 13 Arizona rolled to a 93-67 win over Utah Tech on Friday night.

The Wildcats (2-0) overcame a sloppy start and some defensive breakdowns by shooting 57% from the floor to win their 24th straight home opener.

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Anthony Dell’Orso had 15 of his 18 points in the first half to spark Arizona out of its funk and Brayden Burries finished with 18 points. Peat hit 6 of 7 shots in the follow up to his 30-point college debut in Monday’s 93-87 win over defending champion Florida.

Awaka dominated inside all night and so did Arizona, which outscored Utah Tech 58-24 in the paint.

The Trailblazers (2-1) had some good moments offensively after an ugly start, but wore down against the bigger Wildcats. Ethan Potter led Utah Tech with 15 points.

Arizona followed its impressive win over No. 3 Florida by committing five fouls and three turnovers in the opening 4 1/2 minutes against the Trailblazers.

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Once the Wildcats and Dell’Orso got rolling, Utah Tech had no answer.

A starter most of last season, Dell’Orso came in firing off the bench, hitting consecutive 3s during and 18-2 run that put Arizona up 31-16. Dell’Orso had 15 points by halftime and Arizona hit 16 of 30 shots, but had a hard time shaking Utah Tech.

The Trailblazers took advantage of defensive breakdowns by the Wildcats, using a couple of short runs to stay within 44-37 at halftime.

Burries converted a three-point play that made it 56-44 with about 4 1/2 minutes into the second half and Arizona led be double figures the rest of the way.

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Dell’Orso and Burries each hit three of the Wildcats’ seven 3-pointers.

Up next

Utah Tech plays at Arizona State on Sunday.

Arizona hosts Northern Arizona on Tuesday.

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Welcome! To another edition of the Arizona Wildcats Insiders Podcast featuring your host Troy Hutchison, who will be delivering a daily podcast discussing everything happening surrounding Arizona athletics giving you an inside look  at all the programs on campus.

Hutchison has been covering Arizona for the last seven years with his coverage spanning all-across UA’s campus from football and men’s basketball to Title IX sports. Plus, with so many former Wildcats playing at the next level in their prospective sports there will be moments where he will take a deep dive into the Cats excelling outside of Tucson.

The Wildcats faced off against defending national champs No. 3 Florida in a neutral-site class of the titans. No. 13 Arizona rolled out a starting lineup featuring point guard Jaden Bradley, guard Brayden Burries, guard/forward Ivan Kharchenkov, forward Koa Peat and center Motiejus Krivas.

That young lineup that featured three freshmen were able to stay stride-for-stride against the Gators even after falling behind by double-digits early in the game. Arizona (1-0) managed to pull off the opening night upset 93-87 over Florida.

Arizona received massive games from Peat and Bradley, who combined for 57 points while going 20 of 32 from the field and hit clutch bucket after clutch bucket to help lift the Wildcats over the Gators.

Coming into the season, many didn’t have Bradley as one of the top point guards nationally and he was even left off every major watchlist including the Bob Cousy Award watchlist.

Yet against Florida, Bradley played his best game in his college career and made a statement on the national stage with all of college basketball watching.

Now, after pulling off the upset on Monday, Arizona will face off against Utah Tech, which is coming off a narrow 81-79 win over South Dakota.

The last and only meeting between Arizona and Utah Tech came during the 2022-23 season when the Wildcats won 104-77 over the Traiblazers.

To get you ready for the game, we at Arizona Wildcats On SI have put together our game prediction for Arizona’s opening home game.

Reason

Arizona proved on Monday night that they are one of the better teams nationally with an upset win over the Florida Gators. In that game, Peat was able to show off his ability as one of the better freshmen nationally with a 30-point performance. Meanwhile, Bradley proved that he is one of the better point guards coming into the 2025-26 season.

This is the perfect game for Arizona to see Burries get back on track after a 3-point performance against Florida where he fouled out of the game. Getting a talented freshman like him back on track will be critical for the Wildcats moving forward.

Plus, this will give Arizona a chance to go deeper into its bench and see what it has from guys like Sidi Gueye and Evan Nelson, who didn’t get many minutes against the Gators. The Wildcats will need to get production out of Nelson as the season moves along and in games where foul trouble occurs.

Please be sure to share your thoughts with us on our game prediction for the Wildcats game against Utah Tech. To do so, follow us on our X account by clicking on the link.

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Representative Karianne Lisonbee, who has served in the Utah House of Representatives since 2017 and previously served in House leadership, has announced that she will not be seeking reelection at the end of her term.

Lisonbee is a Republican from the 14th district, which covers Syracuse and Clearfield. She has served as the House Majority Whip and the Majority Assistant Whip, as well as Rules Vice Chair and the Judiciary Committee Chair.

Utah Republican Party is not gathering signatures for referendum on Map C

In a post to social media, Lisonbee wrote, “At the end of my current term in the Utah Legislature, I will have served in public office for 16 years. Each election cycle is a time for reflection. This year, after my biennial deep deliberation, I feel the time has come for a new chapter and new opportunities in my life and I have decided that I will not seek reelection next year.”

Prior to serving in the state legislature, Lisonbee served on the Syracuse City Council.

She also said that she will serve out the remainder of her current term. “With the filing period for the 2026 election in January, I want to provide ample decision-making time for those interested in running for the Utah House of Representatives,” she wrote.

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She thanked her husband Seth for his support over the years and said that they plan to stay active and involved within the community.

“It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve the wonderful people of House District 14, my community, and our great State of Utah. I am humbly grateful for the support from so many who care deeply about preserving our liberty and way of life. It is vital that we stay engaged and hold fast to the principles of good government that preserve individual liberty and strong families,” she wrote.

You can read her full post on Facebook here.

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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.

This is a developing story. ABC4 will update this post as more information becomes available.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, Utah (ABC4) — A head-on crash on SR-68 and Redwood Road in Utah County has closed lanes in both directions.

According to UDOT, the crash happened on SR-68 and Redwood Road at Wildlife Blvd (MP 26.4). All lanes are closed, and so are both exit ramps.

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UDOT originally estimated the clearance time to be 4:53 p.m., but as of 5:10 p.m., the lanes are still closed. According to Saratoga Springs Police Department, the accident should be cleared by 6 p.m.

As of 7 p.m., lanes appear to have been reopened.

Police told ABC4 that this incident was a head-on crash between two vehicles, a passenger car and a dump truck. The driver of the passenger car was transported to the hospital via life flight, but reportedly, they were talking and alert. The driver of the dump truck was not injured. No fatalities have been reported.

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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.

DETROIT — Back in 2015, at the FIBA U18 EuroBasket tournament, a young Lauri Markkanen noticed one of the Ukranian players warming up, doing between-the-leg dunks, out-jumping and out-shooting everyone else on the court.

Markkanen was already intimidated, playing with and against players that were a year or more older than him. But this Ukranian player was something else, and he was committed to a blue blood U.S. program at the University of Kansas.

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That player was Svi Mykhailiuk.

Markkanen would eventually also commit to a premier collegiate basketball program at the University of Arizona. The two would also get drafted into the NBA, share an agent, work out together during the offseasons and then come together as NBA teammates. But their paths weren’t exactly the same.

Markkanen left Arizona after his freshmen season and was the No. 7 overall draft pick in 2017. With stops in Chicago, Cleveland and now with the Utah Jazz, he has always been a large part of a night-to-night rotation and is now easily regarded as the Jazz’s best player.

Mykhailiuk played for four years at Kansas before entering the draft and getting picked in the second round (47th overall) in 2018. Since then he’s played for eight different teams, always trying to find his footing in the NBA.

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“Unfortunately, that’s part of the NBA,” Markkanen said. “No matter how much I love my teammates, that’s part of the league. … But when I’ve talked to him, he’s kept his mind right, and keeps working, and now he’s in a spot that he gets to play a lot and he’s got a big responsibility in the way that we perform. I’m happy for him, for sure.”

On Wednesday night, Mykhailiuk scored a career-high 28 points for the Jazz in a 114-103 loss to the Detroit Pistons. His previous NBA career-best of 27 was set last year with the Jazz and it matched his collegiate career-high of 27 from Kansas. So getting over that number was an elusive feat.

“Svi’s been been really steady for us over his time here,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “I mean steady in terms of his approach, his professionalism, understanding where he is in his career and how he can play off the other guys.”

That steady approach is not something that Hardy says without really meaning it. It’s a marker of who Mykhailiuk is, it’s how his reputation has allowed him to stay in the NBA, it’s one of the main reasons the Jazz wanted to give him a shot and it’s something that the Jazz’s young core should pay real attention to.

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He has earned the respect of the coaching staff and the rest of his teammates by being the consummate professional, always diligently preparing with scouting reports, always going hard in practice, always giving maximum effort in the weight room, his individual work and into the minutes he’s given on game days. Even so, he’s always calm and focused.

You’d hardly ever know that every season he’s been fighting for his NBA life.

“Desperation is a heck of a thing,” Hardy said. “I think he models really good professional behavior for our young players, because Svi is in a moment where, like you look at his contract and he’s playing for something. The way he carries himself, the way he interacts with all of his teammates, he would never let you know that there’s that desperation. He doesn’t make it about himself. He really gives himself to the group. And I think that’s something that we can all take from Svi.”

The Jazz’s young players have recently been showing a lot of flashes, here and there, of what they could be capable of. But consistency with everything, including approach to the game, is going to be crucial in their ability to create longevity in the NBA. With that longevity also comes the realization that you are never finished trying to get better.

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Even during a loss in Detroit, there were moments of incremental growth being displayed by the likes of Ace Bailey and Walter Clayton Jr., growth that needs to be appreciated and built upon.

And for a small moment, Mykhailiuk could enjoy that for the first time since Nov. 17, 2017 — in a Kansas game against San Diego State — he was able to score more than 27 points. He was still getting better and doing more and building on what came before.

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Utah is known for having the best snow on earth, and ski season is almost here! Utah’s ski resorts are getting ready to open for the season, and they’re making some expansions.

Most of Utah’s 15 ski resorts have announced their opening dates for the winter season, which you can find below. These are anticipated opening dates, and they may change depending on weather conditions.

Utah resorts opening in November 2025:

• Brian Head Resort – November 14

• Solitude Mountain Resort – November 14

• Alta Ski Area – November 21

• Park City Mountain – November 21

• Snowbird – November 27

• Snowbasin Resort – November 28

• Woodward Park City – November 28

Utah resorts opening in December 2025:

• Deer Valley Resort – December 1

• Powder Mountain – December 12

• Eagle Point Resort – December 19

Utah resorts who have yet to announce opening dates:

• Beaver Mountain

• Brighton Resort

• Cherry Peak Resort

• Nordic Valley

• Sundance Mountain Resort

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Expansions and improvements

Many of Utah’s resorts are debuting expansions, new lifts, and guest experiences this season as Utah gears up to host the 2034 Winter Olympic Games. According to Ski Utah, “the industry is looking not just at what’s next but at what’s never been done before,” as the industry prepares to celebrate Ski Utah’s 50th anniversary on December 3.

Many resorts including Brian Head, Nordic Valley, Brighton, Solitude are making expansions to snowmaking systems in order to improve conditions and extend the number of days they are able to stay open.

Cache Valley Resorts

Beaver Mountain is debuting a brand-new day lodge this season, called Marge’s Cabin. It is named in honor of Marge Seeholzer, Beaver Mountain matriarch, and it incorporates the original lodge’s historic fir siding. It is also the oldest continuously family-owned ski area in the country.

Ogden/Weber County Resorts

In addition to a complete tune up of its snowmaking system, Nordic Valley is hoping it will allow for better access to the Nordic Express, an 8-week kids skiing program.

Powder Mountain has new perks for passholders, including discounted Bunny Tickets and early-morning lift access. The resort is also working on a new triple lift in Wolf Canyon that will allow access to the “DMI” area for the first time, adding 1,047 acres of public advanced terrain. It won’t be open for this season, but you can book a guided backcountry tour of the area through the resort.

Snowbasin has completely replaced the Becker Lift, reducing ride time from 12 minutes to under seven, allowing the lift to transport 1,800 riders every hour. Snowbasin is also regrading the Bear Hollow Trail to enhance beginner and family friendly skiing and launching RFID gate access to reduce wait times.

DWR warns drivers to watch for deers during darker months

Visit Ogden is also offering package deals for purchase, which bundle lodging discounts with rentals and lessons. Those packages also include discounted lift tickets and “unique on-mountain experiences,” according to Ski Utah. If you book a hotel room in Ogden, you will also get exclusive discounts at all three local resorts, including 20% off lessons, rentals, and day passes.

Park City Resorts

Deer Valley is seeing the largest expansion of any Utah resort for this winter season, more than doubling in size. It will debut seven new chairlifts, bringing the resort total to 31 total lifts, 202 ski runs, and 4,300 skiable acres, according to Ski Utah. Deer Valley will also offer 1,200 day-skier parking spaces this season. All of this is part of the resort’s Expanded Excellence Initiative.

Park City Mountain is debuting the Sunrise Gondola this season, a high-speed 10-person lift that will take guests to Red Pine Lodge and beginner terrain. The resort team replaced 1,400 feet of old snowmaking pipe and added 700 feet of pipe. There is also a new beginner area at Red Pine Lodge, accompanied by a new children’s lunchroom inside the lodge.

Resorts in the Cottonwoods

Alta Ski Area is on track to complete its realignment of the Supreme chairlift in time for the winter season. Brighton will open a new slopeside stop called The Waffle House that will serve golden waffles and warm drinks in the base area. It will also offer some new amenities to guests outside Snake Creek Lodge.

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Solitude invested $4.5 million in snowmaking improvements, which includes installing a new pipeline to import water for the system. It also added four new Wyssen avalanche towers to Fantasy Ridge, which will allow patrols to remotely mitigate avalanche hazards in difficult terrain. There will also be free mid-week parking at Solitude this season. Snowbird has a new restaurant called The Nest this season, offering stunning panoramic views of the valley below.

Sundance Mountain Resort

The Inn at Sundance Mountain Resort is opening this season, with 63 hotel rooms right next to Outlaw Express. The inn will have amenities like an art gallery, a wellness center with daily yoga classes, and a ski valet and boot room to store equipment. Sundance Mountain Resort is also planning a two-year expansion, and this season there is 60 acres of new terrain in the Far East area.

Southern Utah Resorts

Brian Head Resort invested over $1.4 million in upgrades in snowmaking, new gladed runs, upgraded rentals, and new ski patrol equipment. Those upgrades in snowmaking will allow for more beginner and intermediate terrain to open earlier and stay open longer. Eagle Point is adding the Polestar condominium buildings, which allow direct trailside access just above the Tunnel Vision Underpass. It is also adding a fitness center at Canyonside Lodge this season.

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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.

Watch the full interview on the News4Utah+ app.

LOGAN, Utah (ABC4) — Utah is a place rife with folklore and local legends, and a USU folklorist sat down with us to talk about some of those legends and what belief means to society.

Associate Professor of Folklore at Utah State University Lynne McNeill spoke with ABC4 about some of Utah’s most interesting pieces of folklore and what it’s like to study the paranormal.

Utah State University is home to the Fife Folklore Archives, one of the largest folklore archives in the country, and McNeill said that it’s a great reason to come to Utah and study folklore. In addition to being a professor, McNeill has also appeared on multiple TV shows, including “Paranormal Caught on Camera” on Travel Channel and “The Unexplained History’s Greatest Mysteries” on History Channel.

From Aztec gold to the monster of Bear Lake — 10 of Utah’s wildest and most chilling urban legends

Lynne described herself and other academic folklorists as having a “professional agnosticism” when it comes to ghosts and the paranormal.

“I very much think that belief is the far more interesting stance to take. I just don’t like to close any doors,” she said. “I’m interested in other people’s belief.”

She said that it’s easy to assume that people who believe that something supernatural happened are being irrational, but research has shown that people are not making irrational leaps.

“People are always trying to explain something through rational or natural explanations first, and when they sort of can’t, that’s when they go, okay, maybe it’s something supernatural or paranormal instead of something natural or normal that happened here,” she said. “And I think what motivates people to believe that is often incredibly meaningful and often very personal.”

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For Lynne, folklore is important because it is focused on stories from normal people. She explained, “I think that what folklore studies teaches us is the value of everyday people and their cultural expressions and experience.”

“Folklore kind of brings us down to a more grassroots level, a more everyday level: the stories we tell each other, the ways we make meaning of the world in and of ourselves, and that’s almost more influential and more significant than those great works that culture and global society can give us because that’s the daily world in which we live,” she continued.

The Nunnery

The nunnery is also known as St. Anne’s Retreat, and it was a retreat for the Catholic Church. Lynne explained that as the story goes, it was also where nuns were sent if they had gotten pregnant, which is against the rules of the church.

“The story is that nuns would go here to convalesce while they were pregnant, have the babies, give them up for adoption, and then they would leave and rejoin their convent out back in the outside world,” Lynne said. “And the story goes that one young num who arrived there made the really horrific discovery that the babies that were born there were not being given up for adoption.”

Opening dates set for Utah’s ski resorts for the 2025-2026 season: What’s new

Instead, the babies were being drowned in the pool and buried in the woods. In the story, the nun tries to escape, but she and her baby are murdered, and she haunts the area.

The nunnery is a popular site for legend tripping, which Lynne explained is when a group of friends pile into a car and go to check out the creepy place for themselves.

Monster of Bear Lake

Like Loch Ness in Scotland, Bear Lake is supposedly home to its own lake monster.

“This idea that there is a large, oftentimes serpentine type creature, sometimes described as having a horse like head, sometimes described as having a long body. There is a lot of precedent for stories like this in a lot of lakes around the world,” Lynne explained.

The Bear Lake monster is officially named Isabella, and she has been in the news since the mid 1800s.

“A journalist named Joseph Rich from the Deseret News wrote an article with a bunch of interviews from locals, all of whom said they’d seen the monster, they’d heard of the monster, they knew someone who’d been dragged into the water by the monster. Years later, Rich says he fabricated it. He says it’s all a lie,” Lynne said.

But that didn’t stop people from reporting sightings of the monster. According to Lynne, there are records in the archives dating from the 1960s up to the last four years in the student folklore collection.

“People still see this lake monster. People still have stories about it, so the jury’s really out on this one,” Lynne said. “There’s a Bear Lake Festival. I mean, people love a local monster. It sort of becomes a mascot for the region.”

Logan Cemetery

The Logan Cemetery is known for one particular statue known as the weeping woman, and Lynne said that she is another longstanding story with records in the archives going back to the 1970s.

The statue itself is what’s known as a surrogate mourner–a figure meant to be expressing grief and loss constantly, when family members can’t always be at the cemetery. The legend, though, is as if the statue is of a woman who’s buried in that grave.

There are two stories, according to Lynne, one where the woman murdered her children, and one where they died of natural causes and her grief killed her.

“The story says that if you go there at one of these sorts of ritually appointed times and chant, ‘weep, woman, weep,’ or some people say, ‘cry, lady, cry,’ at the statue, you will see her cry real tears. Some people even say tears of blood,” she explained.

Lynne has even had her own supernatural experience at Logan Cemetery, which she said was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to her. On Halloween night a few years ago, using an app meant to communicate with spirits, she heard a clear voice tell her to leave.

Watch the full interview on the News4Utah+ app. Learn how to download the app for your smart TV device here.

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Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.