Ute basketball team working out in summer

After spending five straight days on the golf course covering the Utah Men’s Amateur golf tournament, I decided to drop by one of the weekly pickup games at the Huntsman Center featuring Ute basketball players.
Ute players are allowed to play pickup games without any coaches present during the summer. A dozen players or so were present, so I watched them for an hour. The most impressive players that night were . . . Shaun Green and Lawrence Borha. Yep Green and Borha are both still working out as they prepare to play professionally next year. Borha will join a team in Germany next month.
As for current Ute players, several are sitting out because of injuries. Kim Tillie and Carlon Brown watched from the sidelines as did JC transfer Jay Watkins. Tillie is still trying to overcome a nagging injury to his heel, while Brown can’t play for another month after getting his face smashed by an errant Jason Washburn elbow. He needed surgery to repair eight bones in his face. Watkins has a thumb injury.
It’s hard to tell much from a bunch of pickup games to 11, but the player that stood out to me the most the other night was point guard Chris Hines, who ran his team well and scored several buckets on drives and jumpers.
Watch for a feature on 7-foot-3 center David Foster, who just returned from an LDS mission, in the next couple of days.