Takeaways from Utah basketball's thorough win over Eastern Washington

Runnin' Utes beat the Eagles for win No. 8 of the season

Utah Runnin' Utes head coach Alex Jensen and his team improved to 8-4 with a 101-77 win over the Eastern Washington Eagles. | Rob Gray-Imagn Images

Utah men's basketball head coach Alex Jensen watched his team beat itself in more ways than one over the course of nonconference play, notably during the second half of its last game against Mississippi State.

Perhaps whatever Jensen and his staff said to their players after the Runnin' Utes surrendered a 14-point second-half lead to the Bulldogs in their 82-74 loss at the Delta Center flipped a switch going in Saturday's bout with Eastern Washington. Or maybe the messages they'd been preaching since the start of the season finally set in.

Whatever the case might've been, it helped Utah respond from its disheartening loss with its most complete performance under its first-year head coach.

Led by 20-point performances from Don McHenry (27), Keanu Dawes (21) and Terrence Brown (20), the Runnin' Utes (8-4) set new season-highs in points (101), made field goals (39), assists (23) and margin of victory (24 points) in a 101-77 victory over the Eagles (2-10) Saturday night from the Jon M. Huntsman Center.

Here's three takeaways from the game

Finishing the job

Utah, which struggled against some of its other mid-major competition over the course of nonconference play, made sure to shut the door on Eastern Washington when it had the chance. A 9-0 scoring run, capped off by back-to-back scores from Kendyl Sanders, made it a 12-point game after the two sides exchanged blows through the first 13 minutes of play.

Ibrahima Traore, a 6-foot-9, redshirt freshman making his Utah debut, scored his first collegiate bucket to extend his team's lead to 18 with just under 30 seconds left in the half. Johnny Radford got an attempt to fall just before the buzzer sounded, but all the momentum was in favor of the Runnin' Utes.

Eastern Washington trimmed its halftime deficit down to 12 as the outside shots stopped falling for Utah, though McHenry got one of his six treys to go down just as the Eagles started making their push, extending the lead back to 15. McHenry's bucket also jumpstarted an 8-0 scoring run, which made it 80-60 with under 8 minutes remaining after McHenry completed a 3-point play at the charity stripe.

When the well dried up from downtown, the Runnin' Utes put their head down and drove to the rim. Utah was 28-of-48 on 2-point attempts, it's best showing of the season from inside the arc, and scored 52 points in the paint.

Eastern Washington finished with a slight edge on the boards thanks to 18 offensive rebounds, but only had 13 second-chance points as the Eagles shot 40% from the field and 30.8% from 3 on the night.

A much-needed rebound

Utah got in its own way several times during its 8-point loss to Mississippi State, giving Jensen and company reason to believe they could've came out victorious had it not been for their own self-inflicted miscues.

Unfortunately for the Runnin' Utes, that had been a constant theme throughout nonconference play; whether it'd be a lack of intensity on the defensive end of the floor, cold stretches offensively due to poor shot selection or a combination of both. A bit of everything reared its ugly head into the Mississippi State loss, making it imperative the Runnin' Utes right their wrongs with one more nonleague game left on the docket before entering Big 12 play.

The Eagles didn't come in posing the same physical and mental challenges some of Utah's conference opponents will inevitably bring to the Huntsman, though it had to feel good for Jensen seeing his team compete hard on both ends of the floor for 40 minutes, regardless of the level of competition on the other bench.

Rise of Dawes

While Jensen and his staff have probably become accustom to seeing Utah's backcourt deliver big stat lines, they had been waiting for Dawes to put up big numbers of his own.

The 6-foot-9 forward was dominant on the glass throughout the first 11 games, though he'd yet to cross the 20-point threshold until Saturday, when he went 9-of-9 from the field and grabbed nine rebounds in 29 minutes of action. His 21 points was the most he'd scored in a game since finishing with 21 against UCF in the 2025 Big 12 Tournament.

Up next: Utah will head to Seattle to face Washington (7-4) at Alaska Airlines Arena on Dec. 29. Tip off is set for 9 p.m. MT on Fox Sports 1.