What Alex Jensen said after Utah squandered late lead to Cincinnati

Runnin' Utes crumble down the stretch of road loss to the Bearcats

Utah Runnin' Utes head coach Alex Jensen works the sideline against the Cincinnati Bearcats in the second at Fifth Third Arena. | Aaron Doster-Imagn Images

Through 38 minutes of play, Utah had done everything it needed to do in order to leave Fifth Third Arena with a win.

Unfortunately, the final 84 seconds of regulation belonged to Cincinnati, which ripped off nine consecutive points in under 2 minutes to pull out a 69-65 victory over the Runnin' Utes on Sunday.

Here's what Utah head coach Alex Jensen had to say after his team's seventh straight loss.

On Utah's mental lapses and maturation process

"My message has been, whether we play on the road or a home, at 10 or at midnight, there's things you can always do. For the first time we fouled a 3-point shooter in a while; we did it twice. I think they made all six or five of them. That's something you can control."

"I do kind of go back to those things that you can control every game, and we just got to keep getting better at that. We were in a great position [to win]. A lot of guys on my team haven't been in this position. I keep talking about, a maturing process. Got to continue to head in that direction."

On Utah's rebounding effort

"Collectively, we've done a good job with that. And that's because that's something we give up in a lot of the games in the conference is size. We did a good job of that. But, hard to win as a team when you have more turnovers than assists."

On giving up a dunk off the opening jump ball

"For the last seven or eight games, we've talked about the jump ball and our starts. And if you noticed, I had to go switch Seydou [Traore] and [Keanu Dawes] to get next to their guys."

"It's just the maturity, the focus; I don't know what you'd be thinking about, other than where's my man, and it's a block out. That's the hard part. You lose a close game, and you start out like that ... nobody's walked through or gone over the jump ball more than we had this year. It's disappointing."

On keeping his players' heads up

"It's very important. I wouldn't keep track if we had a winning streak or a losing streak. It's game to game. I asked them after, 'Were you good enough to win that game?'"

"You are [good enough to win] If we play hard and we play better. Give credit to Cincinnati. It's the maturity process being at this level and confidence is huge, especially on the road. But I've told multiple guys on my team: I can't believe in you more than you do, that doesn't work. You got to go out there and make mistakes of being aggressive, not the mistakes of being passive."