Krystkowiak comfortable at Utah

— -- EUGENE, Ore. -- The first year of coach Larry Krystkowiak's tenure at  Utah was a blur.

"I'm not exactly sure how I did it, honestly," Krystkowiak said.

"That was the longest year of my coaching life," associate head coach Tommy Connor added. "As I think it was for all of us. None of us on the staff had been a part of too many losing teams."

The Utes won just six games in the season. They started 3-9 in nonconference play, with an average losing margin of 22.5 points.

After that stretch, Krystkowiak wasn't sure his team would win a single game the rest of 2011-12 as Utah embarked on its first season in the Pac-12.

It was a bit reminiscent of Krystkowiak's experience with the  Milwaukee Bucks from 2006 to 2008. During his tenure, the Bucks went 31-69. But in the NBA, while those losing streaks might last longer, a team is less likely to suffer through winless streaks of three- or four-plus weeks because of the concentration of games.

That happened twice during Krystkowiak's first season at Utah.

For the most part, his calm demeanor ruled the day as he reminded his guys that no team is ever as bad as it thinks it is, nor as good as it thinks it is (the former is what mostly applied to them).

But he had his moments.

"We had to talk him off the ledge a couple times," Connor said. "We got through it."

One that stood out was the Utes' conference opener at  Colorado. On the floor, they got beat by 40; off the floor, some players were having trouble adjusting to the new regime.

But they followed that up with an overtime win at home against Washington State and then managed to scrap together two more conference wins before the season -- mercifully -- ended.

Today, there isn't a single player on his 13th-ranked Utah roster that was a member of that team. And the building process, for those inside of it, doesn't feel all that quick at all.

Krystkowiak will be the first to remind everyone that it has, in fact, been more than 1,000 days since he took the job, and much can be done in 1,000 days if every day's focus is to get a little better than the last.

Plus, 1,000 days truly feels like a lifetime when Krystkowiak realizes it's the longest he has ever spent in one place since he was in college in the 1980s.

For the first time in a long time, he's settling in, and with that, a college basketball team and its fan base have been rejuvenated.

At 50, Krystkowiak is planting roots for, really, the first time in his life.

"It feels good," he said with a pause and a sigh. "It's unusual."

Since Krystkowiak and his wife, Jan, were married 18 years ago, the two have moved -- on average -- once every 15 months. They've lived in 11 different states (including twice in Georgia and thrice in Montana), and all five of their children, with the exception of the twins, were born in different states and three different time zones.

"That was our normalcy," Jan said. "For a while, we got kind of itchy after 2½ years. We'd go, 'Time to move, time to start cleaning out the closets. Where are we going?'"

She and the kids have watched from the stands as Larry has built up Utah. So after Year 3, when the Utes went 21-12 and made an appearance in the NIT, Jan came to her husband with a proposition that he had brought to her so many times before: Let's move.

Only this time, they did it within the same city. Krystkowiak didn't want to move again. But Jan would argue this new house had a yard and an indoor basketball court and had the chance to be a perfect home with the help of Jan's renovation abilities (she has her real estate license in eight different states).

To be fair, this was actually the second time one of them had found the "perfect" home. The first was in California, shortly before Larry got a job with the  Nets in 2010.

As Jan went through the all-too-usual moving motions, Krystkowiak embarked on something unusual, a feat he had never done before as a coach -- a fourth season with the same program.

Through the first three seasons it had gone as he had expected: Year 1 was surviving, Year 2 was finding a way to become competitive, Year 3 was finding a way to win and Year 4, he hoped, was about finding a way to sustain that winning culture.

Looking back, he's not sure which of the years has been the most challenging. Yes, Year 1 was brutal, but there's a unique challenge that has come in Year 4 as his team finds a way to keep winning.

Unlike three seasons ago, the Utes are now experiencing three- and four-week-long win streaks (it has already happened three times this season), but Krystkowiak finds himself coming back to his initial adage: that no team is ever as bad as it thinks it is, nor as good as it thinks it is.

Utah need not look further than a week ago, when it lost on the road to Oregon.

But on Saturday, the Utes have a chance to prove that maybe they can be as good as others think when they take the floor against No. 7  Arizona.

That day, Jan will be attending eight different basketball games between her five children and her husband. Being on the move is nothing new to her and her family, but sitting in the same stands for the fourth season in a row, watching her husband fight for the top spot in the Pac-12, certainly is.

"I hope we get to the point where it becomes a big deal," Jan said of moving. "Because I'm ready to be in one place for a while."