SALT LAKE CITY — The message wasn’t meant to be insulting, but several years ago, after the Utes had been admitted to the Pac-12, athletics director Chris Hill wondered aloud about playing Utah State annually in basketball. He rhetorically asked how many Pac-12 teams play road games against Mountain West opponents on an annual basis.
Up in Cache Valley, Stew Morrill was on slow burn. He was winning 20-plus games most years, yet hearing that a school the Aggies had been meeting since 1909 wasn’t being neighborly. Playing at the Huntsman Center was OK with the Utes. But home-and-home?