Utah Basketball Starts 4–0 Under Alex Jensen — Not Perfect, But Purposeful
Nov 17, 2025, 5:05 PM | Updated: 5:08 pm
SALT LAKE CITY— Alex Jensen didn’t come back to Utah basketball to build a quick fix, he came back to build a title contender. The first four games tell a story— not of flawless execution, but of a team laying a foundation and fighting through growing pains.
The Runnin’ Utes’ are 4-0— they’ve flashed, wobbled, surged, and stalled. They’ve made life harder on themselves than necessary. But they’ve battled and are learning how to compete, how to separate, and how to close.
“I think we’re laying the foundation, preparing us because the schedule is just going to get harder from here on out,” Alex Jensen said of the importance of the first six games on Utah’s schedule. “We kind of have the foundation that we’ve been wanting to build to give us an opportunity to win every game, it’s just a matter of getting better.”
Utah Basketball: A Team Learning in Real Time
Utah’s early wins have featured flashes of high-level basketball—the Seydou Traoré outbursts, Keanu Dawes’ dominance on the glass, long stretches of disciplined offense—and equally long spells where the wheels wobbled.
Some of that turbulence is simply the nature of a revamped roster figuring out how to coexist.
“There’s no substitute for continuity and experience together,” Jensen said. “I give them credit because they’ve all had to change their game a little bit. I think they’ve been accepting of that, and they’re learning how they can play off of each other. They’ve done a good job but can get better as well.”
That’s the balancing act: getting results while still learning how to play Utah basketball in Jensen’s system.
4️⃣ in a row! 🙌
Sam Houston vs. Utah Highlights 📽️#Big12MBB | @UtahMBB pic.twitter.com/YY61WWONj6
— Big 12 Studios (@big12studios) November 16, 2025
Roles are still fluid but gaining clarity. Rotations are still settling. Chemistry is still forming—not in theory, but possession by possession.
Assistant coach Raphael Chillious shared a similar sentiment about that reality.
“We’re still a work in progress, it’s early in the non-conference, and the games are ramping up in terms of the level,” Chillious said. “I think we’re coming a long way though, we’ve come a long way since our exhibition game that’s for sure.”
Chillious has coached enough basketball to know when a team is growing and when it’s spinning its wheels. Utah, he says, is clearly the former.
Offense Clicking, Defense Catching Up
While Utah’s improved offensive rhythm has carried stretches of games, the staff knows where the real heavy lifting remains.
“In the early season, defensively is the hardest place to gel, it takes the longest,” Chillious said. “I think offensively, you’re starting to figure out who does what best, where we want them, and the guys are starting to get a feel for what we want to run.”
It shows. When Utah is locked in and communicating, the defense looks sharp—switches are clean, closeouts are disciplined, and the physicality around the rim looks Big 12 ready.
But those moments have been too few and far between, while the lapses have been fairly frequent. That’s a major piece to the puzzle for Utah to figure out and Chillous talked about what goes into a truly successful defensive identity.
“Defensively, we still are getting used to, like, every game there’s a different challenge, depending on who you play,” Chillious said. “Different schemes, different personnel, so that’s the piece that takes a little bit longer.”
This staff isn’t sugarcoating anything. They know they can’t survive the Big 12 playing defense in spurts. They also know that defense is usually the last thing to come together for a new group.
What the 4–0 Start Actually Means For Alex Jensen, Utah
Look, nobody’s carving Utah’s name into a tournament bracket based on an unblemished start through four contests. But starting 4-0—even imperfectly—matters for a program trying to reboot its identity.
It builds belief. It builds buy-in. It builds the habit of winning. These are all players that come from different situations and have to learn how to win together.
The Utes are far from a finished product—not even close and they’re not pretending to be. They’re working through their struggles and adding to the win column tally.
This is what early-season progress looks like for a program in a rebuild. Imperfect basketball. Honest assessments. And the steady, methodical building of something that will actually last.
Utah is 4-0. They’re not great yet. But they’re getting better. And for Jensen, that’s exactly the point.
