Month: March 2025

Even though Utah and Indiana have never played in women’s basketball, when they meet for the first time in Friday’s NCAA Tournament first-round action, there may be some familiarity between the two programs.

That’s because there are some similarities between the two schools this season, potentially setting up a tight, thrilling matchup.

From similar-style leading scorers to veteran NCAA experience to coming off a long break, here’s a look at three storylines that could play major factors in how Friday’s first-round game (11:30 a.m. MDT, ESPN2) plays out.

Gianna Kneepkens vs. Yarden Garzon

Both teams are led by a sharpshooting junior guard, and how the two fare against each other may shift the momentum in the NCAA Tournament matchup.

For Utah, that’s 6-foot Gianna Kneepkens.

For Indiana, it’s 6-foot-3 Yarden Garzon.

The similarities in the statistical numbers each put up are noteworthy.

Kneepkens leads Utah by averaging 19.2 points per game this season, while Garzon is Indiana’s top scorer at 14.5 per game.

Since the start of Big 12 play, Kneepkens has had 10 games with 20 or more points and three games of 30 or more.

Garzon has scored in double-figures for seven straight games now, including a 23-point effort in a Big Ten tournament loss to USC, a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed.

Both players are also known for their 3-point shooting prowess.

Kneepkens averages 3.0 3s per game, seventh nationally, while Garzon comes in at 2.74, 14th best in the country.

Kneepkens is hitting 45% of her 3-point attempts this season, ninth nationally, while Garzon shoots 41.5%, 25th in the country.

The closest player the Utes have faced this season similar to Garzon in 3-point shooting is TCU’s Madison Conner, who is second nationally at 3.47 3-pointers per game.

In Utah’s 81-73 loss to the Horned Frogs in January, Conner made 3 of 6 3s and shot 4 of 11 from the field for 13 points, while adding a team-high six assists.

That’s a kind of performance Utah could expect to see from Garzon Friday.

Both Kneepkens and Garzon are also strikingly similar in other parts of their game.

Garzon has a slight edge in assists per game — 3.2 to 3.1 over Kneepkens — while Utah’s star has a slim advantage in rebounding, averaging 5.1 to 5.0 for Yarden.

Kneepkens and Garzon are likely to impact the first-round game in a variety of ways.

“I think with (Gianna), a lot of times, she’s the No. 1 thing on the opponent scouting report, so they’re going to try to take on her, but that leaves her opportunities to facilitate, leaves her opportunities to just even draw the defense and create open lanes, open shots for teammates,” Utah coach Gavin Petersen said.

“It’s going to be very important, but we’ve got to take what they give us and we’re more than capable of scoring in a variety of ways.”

NCAA experience on both sides

Both Utah and Indiana are coming into this year’s postseason with plenty of recent success making the NCAA Tournament.

This is the Utes’ fourth-straight season making the NCAAs, while the Hoosiers are participating in their sixth straight.

Utah has won its first-round game each of the past three seasons and reached the Sweet 16 two years ago.

There’s also plenty of seasoned leaders on the Utes squad who are familiar with the NCAA Tournament — along with Kneepkens, seniors Kennady McQueen, Jenna Johnson and Ines Vieira will be making their fourth-straight NCAA appearance for the Utes.

“This is what we set out to do. This was the vision coming in,” McQueen said. “(We’re) using our experience that we’ve gained over the past four years of making it and just use that to propel us forward.”

Indiana, meanwhile, has advanced out of the first round in each of its previous five NCAA appearances in this stretch, reached the Sweet 16 and made it to the Elite Eight in 2021.

The Hoosiers also have several players with multiple years of experience playing in the tournament, including Garzon, grad-student guards Sydney Parrish and Chloe Moore-McNeil and senior forward Karoline Striplin, a transfer from Tennessee who played in the NCAA Tournament multiple times with the Vols.

“We know what to expect,” Parrish said. “We hear our name called (during the selection show), we’re excited, and now we’re ready to get working.”

One area where Indiana has an experience edge is at head coach.

The Hoosiers’ Teri Moren will be coaching in her seventh NCAA Tournament in 10 years at Indiana, while for Petersen, this is his first NCAAs as a head coach. He was an assistant under former Utah coach Lynne Roberts for 10 seasons and helped prepare for the last three NCAA Tournaments.

Both teams are coming off a long break

By the time the teams face each other Friday, it will have been two weeks since either Utah or Indiana has played a game.

That’s because their respective conference tournaments happened two weeks ago, and last week was open as they waited to find out their NCAA Tournament draw on Selection Sunday.

Kneepkens is looking forward to getting back in a competitive environment with high stakes on the line.

“I think as a competitor, you always just want to play games,” she said. “So it was definitely good for us to kind of get back to our fundamentals, get a little sharper there. We’re definitely excited to kind of get prepared and see another face on defense.”

Whichever team is better able to handle the long break between games could end up a first-round winner.

“Our coaches have done a good job of keeping us competitive in practice,” Parrish said. “We’ve never had a practice go by where we haven’t played each other at the end, not just our practice players. That’s kept us really (focused) so we don’t get away from how competitive we are in games.”

Need more proof that Utahns love clean comedy? Look no further than the schedule for Nate Bargatze’s current tour, which was updated this week.

Tuesday’s update included a new show at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, which was already set to host two stops on Bargatze’s “Big Dumb Eyes” tour.

Bargatze added a 3 p.m. MST show on Saturday, Dec. 6.

His 7 p.m. show on that same date is already sold out, and there are few tickets remaining for the 7 p.m. show on Friday, Dec. 5, according to the comedian’s Tuesday announcement.

Nate Bargatze career highlights

With his “Big Dumb Eyes” tour, Bargatze hopes to build on the success of his latest Netflix special, “Your Friend, Nate Bargatze,” which launched in December, and “The Be Funny Tour,” which he wrapped up last year.

In the past year, Bargatze has also helmed a Christmas special on CBS, hosted an episode of “Saturday Night Live” and announced that his first book, “Big Dumb Eyes,” is coming out in May.

Later this year or in 2026, he’s expected to release another special with Netflix, according to Deadline.

And one year from now, he’ll host a cruise that’s called “Nateland at Sea,” referring to his “Nateland” podcast.

Nate Bargatze in Utah

Bargatze spoke with the Deseret News ahead of his three “Be Funny” shows in Salt Lake City in 2023, and said he realized Utahns loved him when he was able to schedule four shows at the Eccles Theater during his “Hello World” tour.

“I actually now have a lot of close friends that live in Salt Lake City. And I actually end up there a lot,” he said. “This last trip to Eccles was a big one. I could definitely feel it. It was definitely building and building.”

During his 2023 shows in Utah, Bargatze made several jokes about religion, in part because his Salt Lake City tour stop overlapped with the 193rd Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Deseret News reported at the time.

“The crowds were so good,” he later said of the Salt Lake City shows. “You have dreams of it happening like this, but every single time it’s overwhelming.”

‘Big Dumb Eyes’ tour

Salt Lake City is one of just five U.S. cities that will host more than two stops on Bargatze’s “Big Dumb Eyes” tour, according to the latest version of the tour schedule.

New York City, Dallas, Las Vegas and Hollywood, Florida, are also on that list.

Tickets for the new Bargatze show in Salt Lake City went on sale Wednesday morning.

Riding the highs of its 3-1 win against the Vancouver Canucks, Utah HC couldn’t have anticipated that it was about to experience its worst loss of the season- a 7-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers.

After trading goal shot streaks, with the Oilers registering the first four and then Utah responding with four of its own, more than halfway through the first period, the game was still scoreless.

But when Edmonton’s Darnell Nurse was assessed a cross-checking penalty against Kevin Stenlund, Utah had a man advantage and an opportunity to capitalize on the Oilers mistake by scoring the first goal of the game.

However, just 26 seconds into the power play, it was the Oilers who were celebrating after capitalizing on a Utah mistake:

With Utah’s Mikhail Sergachev stumbling forward after trying to collect a Dylan Guenther pass, it was Edmonton’s Ryan Nugent-Hopkins who took the puck off the boards and got a breakaway. With Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz too far away, Nugent-Hopkins scored the first goal of the game

What came next was reminiscent of the common saying, “When it rains, it pours.”

First, Utah was assessed a holding penalty after Jack McBain was caught holding Nugent-Hopkins.

While a penalty doesn’t always spell doom, this one was especially ill-timed, as it wiped out Utah’s remaining power play time, denying Utah a chance to retaliate Edmonton’s shorthanded goal. Plus, it allowed the Oilers to keep all the momentum it gained after their first goal.

The penalty also proved costly, as the Oilers scored their second goal just as McBain was getting out of the penalty box.

There were several issues with Utah’s defense on this play.

First, Nugent-Hopkins, who scored the game’s first goal, was left wide open on the right side of the net. In response, Utah’s Olli Määttä was forced to leave Edmonton’s Zach Hyman to contest him.

However, that decision proved to be a costly mistake, as it left Hyman wide open right next to the net. With Hayton too late on his rotation, no one was close enough to prevent Hyman from scoring an easy goal.

Utah Hockey Club Files Trademark Hinting At Possible Team Name According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Uyte LLC—the same company that filed previous trademarks for the Utah Hockey Club—has now filed a trademark for the nickname “Mammoth.”

But placing the blame solely on Hayton and Määttä wouldn’t make sense, as the play seemed to be a team-wide issue with executing proper rotations.

But the defensive mistakes wouldn’t end there, as Utah suffered another breakdown, this time with only less than 10 seconds remaining in the period.

The fact that Utah not only allowed the Oilers’ Connor McDavid to race past its entire defense to score the third goal of the period, but that it happened with so little time left, was a huge mental mistake by the team.

Utah simply allowed McDavid too much space to work with and didn’t alter his path in the slightest.

Even still, with Utah down 3-0, recent games against the Chicago Blackhawks and Toronto Maple Leafs had to still be fresh in their minds, as Utah had shown it could come back from two, even three-goal deficits to force overtime.

But while Utah’s backup goalie Jaxson Stauber—who Tourigny subbed in to replace starting goalie Karel Vejmelka with the intent to rest him after 11 consecutive starts and hopefully give the team a spark—started off with five saves, the Edmonton Oilers couldn’t be stopped, scoring two more goals in each period

The seven goals Utah gave up matched its season high for most goals allowed, as it also gave up seven goals to the Carolina Hurricanes back in February.

But unlike that game, Utah would suffer its worst scoring differential, as Utah scored three times in its game against the Hurricanes but only managed to score once in this game time, thanks to Sean Durzi’s second goal of the season.

Utah HC may have avoided its first shutout since losing 1-0 to the Boston Bruins back in November, but that was about the only redeeming quality of Utah’s 7-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers.

There simply wasn’t much resistance on defense from Utah, as it allowed too many breakaways, man-advantages, high-danger shots and even shorthanded goal attempts.

It’s also never a good sign when you give up two unassisted goals to the other team, as Utah did tonight.

To make matters worse, Utah was the only team to lose out of the four teams vying for a playoff spot, with St. Louis, Vancouver, and Calgary all coming away with wins.

Before tonight’s loss, Utah had been playing well, going 6-3-2 in its previous 11 games and losing by no more than two goals in any of its losses.

So while experiencing the worst loss of the season is sure to leave everyone in Utah unhappy, it will be important for the team to move past the defeat and address all of its defensive miscues, rather than develop bad habits.

But with the game against Edmonton being the last of its three-game road trip, Utah will get a chance to redeem itself in front of its fans against the Buffalo Sabres, who are last in the Eastern Conference.

The Utah Hockey Club hasn’t had many big losses this season. Even when they lose, it’s usually by a goal, plus an empty-netter or two.

Their game against the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday did not fit that norm.

The final score was 7-1, with five of those goals coming in the first 30 minutes of the game. It marks the biggest defeat Utah has ever suffered.

If you’re looking for moral victories in terms of compete level or structure, you won’t find them in these game tapes. Utah gave up chance after chance, breakaway after breakaway.

“Wins or losses, you’ve got to be able to move on,” said Sean Durzi, Utah’s lone goal scorer. “The sun’s going to come up. (We’ve) got to wake up and be ready for the next one. We can’t afford to sulk. Can’t afford to lose confidence in this room.”

Two Oilers in particular deserve shoutouts: Mattias Ekholm and Zach Hyman. Both guys returned from injuries on Tuesday, and they combined for three goals and six points. They’ve both proven to be invaluable additions to this Oilers group.

Utah Hockey for dummies

New hockey fans might look at the final score and assume that Utah’s goalies were at fault. While Karel Vejmelka and Jaxson Stauber can’t fully escape without blame, it had far more to do with the play of the five guys in front of them.

As mentioned above, UHC constantly put its goalies in tough positions by allowing odd-man rushes.

Vejmelka started the game — his 11th in a row — but after Utah had given up three goals at the conclusion of the first period, UHC coach Andre Tourigny turned to Stauber to start the second.

“Too bad we let Veggie down,” Tourigny said after the game. “I think Veggie has been good for us for a long, long time.”

There are two main reasons for the switch: It gave Utah a change of scenery and it allowed Vejmelka to rest up in what was already a lost cause.

Tourigny will likely go back to Vejmelka on Thursday, though he mentioned that it’s good for Stauber to get more NHL experience, even if it’s in a losing effort.

Utah Hockey for casual fans

To add even more salt to the gaping wound, all three of Utah HC’s closest competitors in the standings won on Tuesday.

The Calgary Flames beat the New York Rangers, the St. Louis Blues bested the Nashville Predators and the Vancouver Canucks topped the Winnipeg Jets.

Utah is now four points out of the playoff spot that all those teams are so desperately competing for. With just 14 games left in the regular season, there’s not a lot of room for error.

Utah Hockey for nerds

It doesn’t take a statistician to realize that Utah played poorly on Tuesday, but sometimes advanced stats can offer some consolation. That wasn’t the case this time — especially in the first two periods.

Through 40 minutes, according to Natural Stat Trick, Edmonton controlled:

• 68% of the scoring chances

• 85% of the high-danger scoring chances

• 73% of the expected goals

• 64% of the unblocked shot attempts

Additionally, the majority of Edmonton’s shot attempts came from the slot, while most of Utah’s were from the outside. It’s both a credit to the Oilers’ defense and a point of needed improvement for UHC’s offense.

Utah showed improvement statistically in the third period but not nearly enough to facilitate any sort of a comeback. All of the above categories were around 50% in the third, give or take five percentage points.

“At the end of the day, it’s on me,” Tourigny said. “It’s my job to make sure we’re better than that.”

What’s next?

UHC returns to Salt Lake City for a three-game home stand involving three Eastern Conference teams. First up are the Buffalo Sabres, who’ll be in town on Thursday.

The Sabres are currently in the longest playoff drought in NHL history, 13 seasons. Barring any miracles, this won’t be the year it changes, as they’re at the bottom of the standings in the East with a 12-point gap between them and the last wild card spot.

What does that mean for Utah? It means it’s a must-win game — not because it’s against a rival, but because, at least on paper, it’s one of the team’s easiest remaining matchups.

That being said, there’s no such thing as an easy win in the NHL. The Sabres have won three of their last four games, beating the Oilers, the Vegas Golden Knights and the Boston Bruins — three good hockey teams.

The game starts at 7 p.m. MDT and will be televised on Utah 16 and Utah HC+.

The goal horn would not stop blaring at Rogers Place.

It was, to put it plainly, a disastrous night for the Utah Hockey Club.

Not only did Utah spiral into a 7-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers Tuesday night but all of the other teams chasing the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference — the St. Louis Blues, Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks — won their respective games. The Club sits four points out of playoff contention now.

It was Utah’s largest goal deficit of the season, too. The most the Club had lost by before Tuesday was four goals. History was made, just not in a good way, as Utah ended the game with a six-goal gap between it and the opponent.

“Obviously that’s not us, that’s not who we are. Not the performance we wanted. We’re upset. This time of year you can’t have that,” said Sean Durzi who was the Club’s loan goal-scorer. “We’ll have to regroup, we’ll have to find that mentality of moving on and putting this one in the past.”

Jaxson Stauber skated out towards the net in the moments before the second period. The backup goaltender went in to relieve Karel Vejmelka following a three-goal first period.

It was not a Vejmelka-specific downfall to open the night, though. On the contrary, the netminder — who started in his 11th consecutive game — bailed Utah out early in the first. But, after three goals against (two of which came on 1-on-1 breaks), the Club opted to give Vejmelka a break.

“Too bad we let Veggie down. I think Veggie has been good for us for a long long time. I don’t think we had the right mindset, the right prep before the game,” head coach André Tourigny said. “I think it’s everybody — it’s not one guy more than the other. At the end of the day, it’s on me. It’s my job to make sure we are better than that.”

Stauber entered the matchup in his first NHL action since Dec. 31 which, coincidentally, was also in Edmonton. That game turned out to be a 4-1 loss. Stauber did what he could on Tuesday and finished with 24 saves on 28 shots through 40 minutes of play.

“Staubs is a pro every day. Brings his true self, takes care of his body, focuses on the ice, does everything he can to be ready for the moment,” Durzi said. “I thought he came into a really tough game to a team that wasn’t playing up to our standard and I thought he did a great job.”

The change in goaltending did little to spark the team, however.

Edmonton controlled the contest from the first puck drop to the final buzzer. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins started the domination with a short-handed goal which he flipped past Vejmelka on a breakaway for the 1-0 lead at 12:28. Then came a tip-in shot from Zach Hyman at 15:14, and Connor McDavid topped off the period with an in-close tally after blowing by four Utah players.

Things proceeded to get worse for Utah as the night wore on and seemingly would not end.

Hyman potted his second of the night at 7:41 with a deflected shot in front of Stauber to make it 4-0 before Vasily Podkolzin released a snapshot from the right circle to widen the gap to 5-0. Durzi’s ensuing goal from the point just as Utah’s power play expired did not hold much magnitude.

“Tough to have the right opinion right now. There’s a level of frustration,” Tourigny said. “The fight, the pushback, what we’re known for, the resilience and to be engaged and connected — it was none of that.”

The Oilers scored twice in the first three minutes of the third period to suck the — if there was even any remaining — final air out of the game. Mattias Ekholm ripped one from the high slot after Utah turned the puck over down low for the 6-1 advantage. Viktor Arvidsson followed it up with a knock-in goal around the crease; Utah mishandled the puck in front of its own net once again. That brought the matchup to its final 7-1 standing at 2:36.

“The performance is not up to our standard. Everybody in here knows that,” Durzi said. “I don’t think there’s a guy in here that’s happy with that or can find something that they want to take away from that.”

Utah closed its three-game road trip in Edmonton with the loss and collected two out of the six points available on the western swing. It will be back at Delta Center on Thursday to take on the Buffalo Sabres.

“There’s really no excuse at this time of the year,” Durzi said. “We’ve got to be upset about it.”