The Wolves ended the month with their seventh victory in March, and their first over a team with a winning record bound for the playoffs. They did it by winning for a fourth consecutive time after took a lead into the fourth quarter, a particularly troublesome situation for them earlier in the season when they lost eight of their first 13 games when they led after three quarters.

This time, they did it by hustling more and executing better than Jerry Sloan’s team, who have been known for execution and hustle in his 20 seasons in Utah.

“It’s a great lesson for people to see what happens when you stay within what you’re trying to do,” Sloan said. “They kept executing. They kept running their plays, running them hard. They kept setting screens and this is what we have always said is important for us. But we came out sort of lethargic and really never did get into a rhythm.”

The Jazz did, though, play without starters Andrei Kirilenko (calf injury) and Mehmet Okur (stomach virus).

“Those guys being out did nothing but help us,” Al Jefferson said.

The Jazz has beaten every team in the league this season (only Boston has also done that), but they’ve also lost to about every lousy team in the East except for Milwaukee and in the West they’ve lost to Sacramento, the Clippers, the Blazers three times and now to the Wolves twice.

Wolves coach Randy Wittman started Corey Brewer for Kirk Snyder at small forward for the first time since Brewer hurt his thigh against Seattle at the start of the month and Brewer matched his career high with 16 points on 6-for-9 shooting (yeah, believe it) with seven rebounds and three assists. And he didn’t play a second in the fourth quarter after Wittman stayed with Snyder, Rashad McCants and Marko Jaric (who he moved to the point to combat big Deron Williams) for the entire quarter and paired them with Jefferson and Ryan Gomes down the stretch.

The Wolves have beaten the Jazz twice at home in the past five weeks. On Tuesday night against Detroit, they start the second half of this six-game stretch where they play winning teams headed to the playoffs. They finish their season series with the Jazz by playing there Wednesday night.

BTW, did you catch Derrick Rose’s performance in Memphis’ rout of Texas (there goes my last chance at winning the office pool) in Houston this afternoon? Think he wouldn’t look in a Wolves uniform? Given what the Wolves this season have discovered they have with Al Jefferson inside, I’m not sure the Wolves wouldn’t be better off, if a miracle occurs and they actually do better in the lottery than they deserve and not, landing the draft’s No. 2 pick than No. 1.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 12:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.