Cold shooting continues to be a sore spot for Utes

The Utah basketball team has had myriad issues this year, from too many turnovers to poor shooting to poor defense

to lack of effort.

The latter two issues improved greatly in the last game against BYU, and turnovers, while still noticeable, have

decreased as the season has progressed.

However, shooting has remained a problem and was certainly not very good against BYU, when the Utes shot 26.9

percent from the field and 17.6 percent from 3-point range.

Going into Friday's home game against Idaho State, the Utes rank near the bottom of the NCAA statistics in all three

shooting categories.

In field goal percentage, the Utes rank No. 255 at 40.8 percent, while in free throw percentage they are 253rd at

64.5 percent.

And 3-point percentage? The Utes don't even merit an NCAA ranking because they haven't made the minimum of five per

game. However, if they were making enough treys per game, their 30.1 percentage would put them at No. 237.

Ute coaches are very aware they don't have a lot of great shooters on the team. But coach Larry Krystkowiak

acknowledges that he hasn't been able to spend as much time on shooting as he'd like because there are so many other

things to work on.

"I've always liked to spend a lot of time in practice shooting, but it just seems like we have so many other things

to do, that we haven't been doing enough of it," he said this week. "You've only got so much time in a week, and

we've asked our guys to come in and do a lot of shooting on their own. But when you're on as steep a learning curve

as we've been on with the newness and the defense we were breaking down, you have to kind of pick your poison."

The top two shooters on the team are inside players, Jason Washburn and Blake Wilkinson, who are shooting 56.9

percent and 54.2 percent from the field, respectively. Among the guards, Josh Watkins is the best at 45.5 percent.

"When one person misses a shot, it kind of batters your confidence," said Cedric Martin, who is shooting just 30.4

percent. "I think we just need to get in the gym and put up more game-like shots and come back with more

confidence."

FOSTER COULD REDSHIRT: Earlier in the month, Krystkowiak said he thought David Foster would be unlikely to redshirt

this year and play in 2012-13 because he had already graduated from college and because he had a baby on the way.

This week, however, Foster said he hasn't made up his mind what he'll do and said he was "open" to coming back and

playing next year.

Foster's broken foot is still in a cast and will be until at least early January, he said. Then once it comes off,

he'll need time to rehab, perhaps a few weeks, leaving him perhaps a month or less to actually play in some games.