Travel woes compound Utes' tough season

The Utah basketball team is back on the road again today with an afternoon flight to Las Vegas. With their luck, the flight will somehow end up in Los Cabos, Mexico.
The Utes have certainly had their road woes this year. And we’re not talking just about all the tough losses.
Just about everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong for the Utes in their travels this year. When I asked coach Jim Boylen about it earlier this week, he shook his head and said, “brutal,” but declined to go into much detail about it, perhaps fearing it might sound like an excuse for his team’s lack of road victories.
I do recall talking to him at the the SLC airport waiting for a flight, I believe it was to Denver, and Boylen saying that every flight the Utes had taken up to that point, had been delayed. That particular flight was a couple of hours behind schedule and we got to our destination late in the evening.
Then last week things got even worse.
The Utes decided to charter a flight to TCU to save some time and get the players home in time for class the day after the game. However, their outbound flight was three hours late taking off and had to make a refueling stop in Colorado, so the Utes didn’t get to Fort Worth until after midnight.
Then on the return flight, they had more problems with the charter and after a delay and two refueling stops, the players and coaches didn’t arrive home until after 3 a.m., instead of midnight. Betcha not many players made it to their morning classes.
For the trip to Laramie, the Utes decided to take a bus. It made sense since it is approximately a 5-hour trip, not much different that waiting an hour at the airport, flying to Denver, waiting a half hour for luggage and making a two-and-a-half hour drive up to Laramie.
WIth beautiful weather in the 50s, it seemed like a smart idea going over. However Saturday night after the game, a big snowstorm blew in and was moving across the Wyoming plains when the bus couldn’t go any further. So it turned around and went 40 miles back to Little America, where fortunately there were rooms available for the entire Ute party. Rather than getting home by midnight, it was noon the next day before the Utes arrived home.
But nothing should go wrong today with a one-hour flight to Las Vegas and a 10-minute ride to the hotel.
Or can it?