SALT LAKE CITY - It was the practice before the Utah basketball team faced Gonzaga last season. Jim Boylen, in his second season as a head coach after years as an assistant looked for a spark.

Then Shaun Green, a captain, called out Utah star center Luke Nevill in practice and told him to follow what Boylen said and stop messing around. It was what Boylen, an East Grand Rapids native, wanted - his players to understand and take control themselves.

The next night, Utah upset Gonzaga, 66-65. Boylen had reached his players.

“I’m like, ‘I’ve been waiting for that for a year and a half,’” Boylen said. “’Do you want to win or be right?’ The team saw this and went like this (moving his hand up).

“Shaun Green didn’t care if Luke liked him anymore. Big.”

After spending the majority of his assistant coaching career in the NBA with Houston, Golden State and Milwaukee, Boylen, 44, brought a professional philosophy to Salt Lake.

Unlike many college programs that rely on guard play and 3-pointers, Boylen recruits big men. His teams flow through good center play both on offense and defense, something he learned while assisting former Houston coach and Michigan graduate Rudy Tomjanovich. While there, he worked with Hakeem Olajuwon and Yao Ming and saw how much success the Rockets had running their offense through the big guy. Everything Utah does, from defense to floor spacing, has NBA influence.

It helped, too, that when he arrived in Utah before the 2007 season that he had Nevill, who finished last season as an honorable mention All-American.

Every place he stopped, he picked things up in preparation for his first head coaching job. The offense and defense from the pros. How to teach players from former Michigan State coach Jud Heathcote, who he was a graduate assistant and assistant coach for from 1987-92.

And he picked up how to run and build a program from current Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, whom he assisted from 2005-07 before Utah hired him for his first head coaching gig 20 years after he got into the business following a standout career at Maine.

It doesn’t mean he wasn’t nervous when he took over.

“I was a first-time head coach, so obviously there is a lot of fear there, but I wasn’t afraid of the basketball, I knew what I wanted to run,” Boylen said. “I had been in basketball for 20 years, and I had been preparing and planning for my own head coaching job for 20 years. So what I was fearful of more than the basketball and establishing my program was how do I handle media, those kinds of things that I hadn’t done as a head coach.

“But starting coaching, teaching, I see myself more as a teacher than as a head coach and that’s kind of how I’ve done it, just taught, taught, taught.”

Soon after, the players understood. He took their names off the back of Utah’s jerseys for two seasons to try and instill a team culture over an individual one. He had the entire players move into dorms.

“The way everything is set up, from our practices to our walkthroughs, everything is legit,” junior guard Carlon Brown said. “When we go through our defenses, if one guy breaks down there’s another guy to help and a guy after that helping.

“Everything moves like a machine, works together and connects. I’ve never seen it like that before.”

Boylen’s system isn’t easy to pick up. Brown said it took him his entire first season - a year when Utah finished 18-15 - to understand how it worked.

Then came last year, when everyone started to understand everything a little bit better, from what Boylen was teaching to the head coach himself.

It hit a peak against Gonzaga. From there, Utah went on a 24-10 record, winning 16 of its final 20 games heading to the NCAA tournament, where it earned a No. 5 seed. Included in that was a Mountain West tournament title.

“We matured and we took off,” Boylen said. “The biggest key is we started caring for each other. When you start caring for each other and put the other guy first, it all comes back to you. Everything in life. They didn’t understand that part.”

It’s something he said he’s had to teach again. He has a young team again, a team full of freshmen and sophomores with a little bit of senior influence that has a 4-4 record entering Wednesday’s game (9 p.m., WWWW-FM, 102.9; WOMC-FM, 104.3) against Michigan.

But the difference is, the foundation is there. The players understand what is going on. And though Nevill graduated, 7-foot-3 center David Foster returned from his Mormon mission.

When Boylen was hired, Foster was on spring break his freshman year. He came back and became a focal point. And he understands the coaching style. Boylen may jump on him in practice if he misses easy baskets or rebounds, but it’s because, as Boylen put it, he is just working on their goals.

And Boylen can be fiery. During a recent practice, he lit into one of his post players because he didn’t box out well enough. In the bowl-shaped Hunstman Center, his yelling could be heard more than halfway up the stadium. He’s OK with that. So are his players.

“What I hold them accountable to is their goals. Their goals, not my goal. What do you want to do? ‘I want to be a pro, coach, and I want to graduate’ “ Boylen said. “OK, if you’re pissed when I’m on you about school and don’t get upset when I’m on you about working. I got ’em. It’s kind of like a trick question, you know.”

Trick or not, it’s working.

“To a certain extent it’s a coaching style that’s full of love, you know,” Foster said. “Even though he may chastise you, it’s because he cares for you and wants you to be the best you can be.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.