Utah Jazz at Indiana Pacers: Keys to the Game

Prediction – Jazz 106, Pacers 98

As I mentioned in my week preview piece from yesterday morning, the Pacers are on one of the strangest streaks I’ve ever witnessed and it continued with their loss last night.

Going back to Indiana’s final game before the All-Star break, the team has yet to either win or lose consecutive games, meaning they’ve alternated back and forth between victory and defeat in each single game they’ve played over the past 13 contests.

Since they lost to Toronto last night, if that trend continues it would mean them getting back to their winning ways with a victory over the Jazz tonight. It certainly is a possibility, especially if the same Utah team that played in Chicago shows up in Indiana this evening. But I believe the more likely scenario is that Indiana will finally lose two consecutive games as Utah will come away with the win.

Though playing a fatigued Chicago team on Saturday didn’t seem to help the Jazz, the Pacers have been downright atrocious in second nights of back-to-backs this season as they hold just a 4-11 record in such instances. Not to mention, Utah’s previous win over the Pacers was a wire-to-wire victory that was actually one of the Jazz’s most convincing performances of the season.

Overall, Utah’s staunch defense as well as their individual match-ups at each position, including Gordon Hayward vs. Paul George, seemed to seriously fluster the Pacers and I’m expecting them to do the same tonight to come away with a hard-fought 106 to 98 victory.

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Of course, both of these teams have quite frankly been two of the most inconsistent squads in the league this year, so the outcome could very well depend simply on which team actually decides to show up. As we are currently witnessing with Utah’s two-game losing streak, nearly every time they seem to be building momentum and notching big wins, they suddenly take a nosedive and lose a handful of head-scratchers immediately thereafter.

A third consecutive loss that came at the hands of a fatigued Pacers team would certainly fall into that category, but in some ways, it would almost seem to be par for the course for this up-and-down Jazz team.

Hopefully they’ll be able to end the slump at two games and reverse the trend that they’ve faced so often this season of faltering after their win streaks by closing out this road trip on a high note.

With the Los Angeles Clippers looming not far behind the Jazz in the standings and a showdown between those two teams coming later this week, that’s certainly the result Utah needs in order to stay where they’d like to be in the standings for the quickly approaching postseason.

All stats courtesy of NBA.com and ESPN.com.