Thursday, March 19, 2009

Those are my players

Congrats to Jim Boylen for getting his Utah team to the tourney. According to one Utes player, something Coach Boylen said two years ago at the news conference announcing his hiring laid the foundation for trust.

"Those are my players," Boylen said, nodding at the Utes who were in the room.

That simple statement, says senior guard Lawrence Borha, was the key.

"I never forgot," Borha said. "He did his work, believed in us, thought we could win. That's when I knew we were going to be a good team."

An interesting change Coach Boylen made was to remove the players' names from the back of the home jerseys and replace them with "UTAH."

Says one player: "He let everybody know it's more about the team and more about the program than individuals.

In addition, "down the side of the team's home shorts, starting with Boylen's first year, was placed its new slogan — "U, Us and the Muss." "The U is local parlance for the school; Us is for the team; and The Muss is for the student section. The Mighty Utah Student Section takes its name from a line in the school fight song, "Utah Man" — "No other gang of college men dare meet us in the muss."