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After all the flowery words had been spoken and the first impressions made on Monday, Utah's best basketball player, Will Clyburn, stared straight ahead with dead eyes and not a hint of approval, offering this reaction to the hiring of a new coach: "You don't know until you get out on the floor with the guy. … He sounds great, but I don't know. … I'll believe it when I see it."

Other Utes — some of whom, like Clyburn, have yet to decide whether they'll stay at Utah — said similar things.

One female fan on hand whispered: "He seems good, and he's kind of tall and cute, but, I'm not sure … "

Everyone's a skeptic, and understandably so.

As Larry K-r-y … hold it, let's check that spelling one more time … s-t-k-o-w-i-a-k was introduced as Utah's new lead dog at a news conference, it wasn't the celebration that past introductions of Ute basketball coaches have been.

Believing doesn't come so easy anymore.

And that is one of the biggest challenges Krystkowiak faces right off the top here: convincing the nonbelievers to find a little faith in him.

"I've got all the faith in the world," Krystkowiak said.

He's the only one.

"Faith is taking the first step," Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "even if you don't see the whole staircase."

Too often, Utah basketball has taken that initial step, and then tripped, tumbled and face-planted at the bottom of those stairs.

Endorsing, then, or even accepting, a new guy with all his enthusiasm is an arduous, absolute leap of faith, and making that jump is asking a whole lot of Ute fans, so much snake oil has been sold at the Huntsman Center over the past seven years.

Seven years? Yeah, Ray Giacoletti's money from his contract finally dries up … what, any day now?

Money for nothing.

When Giac was introduced as the Utes' new coach in 2004, athletics director Chris Hill, the man who hired him, said this: "Ray is going to fit in well."

Not exactly.

Then came Jim Boylen.

At his introduction, Boylen said: "I think [Utah] has 28 championships here and by the time I finish, if we don't leave with 48, then I didn't do my job. We're going to play hard and we're going to compete. … I feel in my heart, we can be great here at Utah. I thought I was born for this job."

Wild applause, all around.

Turns out, he was born to float on a raft in a pool somewhere, collecting cash from this job.

"We're going to dream it here," he said, "and we're going to live it."

Boylen was dumped a couple of weeks ago — with millions of dollars left on his deal.

Enter Krystkowiak — five-year contract in hand that will pay him $950,000 per season — into a den of doubt, where that aforementioned good faith has run thin, but, apparently, good money hasn't.

Nobody can blame Krystkowiak for Boylen's mistakes — wait a second, maybe they can, seeing that Larry turned the Utes down last time, leading to Boylen's hiring — but he definitely will feel the effects of them.

And he knows the difficulties in front of him, including not just a widespread lack of belief in what Utah basketball can become, but a dearth of well-being and satisfaction that comes only by way of the exact thing Utah hasn't been — a consistently winning team.

"I understand the challenges that lie ahead," he said. " … Obviously, we've got a lot of work to do in restoring the pride. I want to get the pride back at the University of Utah in the basketball program."

Krystkowiak said his team will play hard, play smart and play together.

Of course, Giacoletti and Boylen made the same promises.

But he added one other thing that he must do, the only thing that will rebuild any kind of real faith around here.

"Win," he said. "You have to win games."

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Gordon Monson Show" weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 104.7 FM/1280 AM The Zone. He can be reached at gmonson@sltrib.com.