Back to the Real Salt Lake Newsfeed

Utah has its youngest team in the Larry Krystkowiak era. These Utes have talent, but patience will be required

This is the second in a series of stories previewing the men’s and women’s college basketball season. Coming Monday: Utah State men.

Entering his ninth season as Utah’s basketball coach, Larry Krystkowiak sounds thrilled about the program’s future.

Krystkowiak optimistically compares his team to the era of Brandon Taylor, Jordan Loveridge and Dakarai Tucker. Those players helped take the program a long way, from a lowly starting point as freshmen. So the immediate question, as the 2019-20 season begins Tuesday at Nevada, is how bad the Utes will become before they start getting better.

The related issue is how tolerant Utah's fans will be of Krystkowiak this season, when they're already dismayed by a three-year absence from the NCAA Tournament and question his $3.