RMR Game 2: Hawks 72 -- Jazz 63

The Jazz lost their second straight game, mostly due to the fact that the Jazz felt like showing off many of the individuals who will not be asked back to attend training camp in October. This loyalty usually affords these fringe NBA players to get enough development time and exposure to be picked up by teams in other leagues (Europe and Asia mainly). There should be some cuts made sometime soon. Onto the game then, where the Jazz had another 3rd quarter collapse.

	1	2	3	4	Final
Atlanta	16	8	27	21	72
Utah	17	14	9	23	63

While the defense took it up a notch and only allowed the Hawks to score 27 points (as opposed to San Antonio scoring 28 the night before in the same quarter), it's still not good. Utah won every other quarter, and when the coach for this game, Scott Layden, took out our three draft picks (Almond, Fesenko and Koufos) the offense screeched to a halt and the other team drove to the basket whenever they desired. Late in the 4th when Layden put those three back in, it was too late and the Hawks just kept burying the Jazz with long distance jumpers as the clock wound down. (Clock doesn't stop in summer league?) Acie Law IV was just killing it, marginal to good point guards are torching the Rocky Mountain Review team the Jazz assembled. Additionally, Othello Hunter was the player of the game, doing everything he wanted because Koufos doesn't know how to box out.

I was able to catch the Internet feed for this game, and watch it in full screen on one of my computer monitors thanks to this link. It's the same link for each game, so if any of you other non-SLC residing basketball fans want to watch, copy that link and open it in your media player of choice. The Boxscore for this game is finally up and I can involve some empiricism in my analysis this time around!

W5 (5 factors that influenced the game):

Who: Kyrylo Fesenko -- if he wasn't in the game, ATL would have won by 30

What: 3rd quarter collapse -- 2nd game in a row, this time the lead went from +7 to -11

Where: The Offensive Glass -- Jazz are strong here even in the summer league, Fesenko had three less than the entire Atlanta team

Why: Atlanta fastbreak -- Jazz got so many offensive boards because Atlanta leaked all night long, and quickly won fastbreak points 14 to 4

How: Rotation -- Atlanta went 10 deep, with all the starters getting over 20 mins of run, Utah played 14 guys, when Atlanta went on their run, the Jazz had Adriatic League benchwarmers in the game.

Stats!

	Mins	Pts	FG	3pt	FT	Rebs	Off	A	St	Bs	Pf	TO
Morris Almond	30	17	(6/13)	(1/2)	(4/4)	4	(1)	0	0	0	2	4
Kyrylo Fesenko	23	9	(4/6)		(1/2)	9	(7)	1	1	3	0	1
Kosta Koufos	22	12	(3/11)		(6/6)	10	(5)	1	0	0	2	0

How did the guys with NBA contracts do?

Photo by Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images	Photo by Scott G. Winterton/Deseret News	Photo by Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images
Morris Almond had a Morris Almond type of game, being an offensive force who really needs to learn how and when to pass the ball, his 4 turn overs were bad, two of which should have been easy assists to Fess for dunks. In a system where he only touches the ball off of screens and doesn't have to create he'll be good -- like a Rip Hamilton.	Kyrylo Fesenko was the player of the game for Utah. He was a defensive force, playing good solid post defense and making life hard for guys who posted up or drove, often making them take contested shots without fouling them, and allowed for Kosta to swoop in and collect the defensive boards	Kosta Koufos played much better, and had nice stats (12/10 out of a 19 year old is always nice), but he only started to play well in the last part of the game and had a couple of hustle points (tip ins, and tip rebounds) that make his stat line look much better than the game he actually played. If shooting is his strength, then give me more Fess.

What's next? The Iranian National Team, RMR Gm. 3 on Monday!