PROVO — Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak smirked after walking past the BYU student section and to his team’s bench at the Marriott Center.

Krystkowiak, who opted to pull the Utes out of a scheduled game here last year for a “cooling-off period” following recent incidents in the rivalry, received a lot of jeers from the crowd.

Krystkowiak was booed loudly during pregame introductions and was the target of group chants like “80 grand” and “That’s not safe,” referring to the cancellation fee he paid and reasons he gave for putting things on hold.

“At the end of the day we just need to be a lot more fundamentally sound and tougher to eliminate those bad stretches,” Krystkowiak said earlier in the week.

Krystkowiak added that the Utes needed to have some maturity and playmaking ability to put an end to such things and not let them magnify.