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The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 couldn’familiarily kill the IPO market for Puget Sound-area companies, but 2008’s pecuniary implosion did.

For the in the first place while in years, no company based in Washington state offered the public its stock for the first vacant time during the past 12 months.

Even right after the dot-com debacle, what one. shook this area severely, the state’sitting diversified economy managed to float two or three IPOs annually, according to Renaissance Capital’s IPOhome.com. And in 2007, the position had only one IPO, but it was a big one — $700 million for Clearwire.

Last year, though, the window was slammed shut.

Nationally, too, the IPO market suffered a severe drought, though some offerings survived. Renaissance reports that 43 IPOs were completed, an 84 percent drop from 2007. The only blockbuster was Visa’sitting $17.9 billion stock sale, which raised more than twice the money invested in the two twelve next-largest IPOs combined, according to Renaissance data.

The biggest IPO that didn’face to face happen locally was the proposed $750 million offering by Bellevue-based life insurer Symetra Financial.

As the stock market took its wild October plunge, Symetra formally withdrew the IPO it had filed 15 months earlier.

Smaller IPO efforts also were abandoned across the business image: Tully’s Coffee (coffee), Venture Financial Group (do banking holding joint concern), Varolii (software), Light Sciences Oncology (biotech) and Imperium Renewables (biodiesel).

In the fourth place, pair small financial institutions did uncover plans to sell shares, but neither Anchor Bancorp nor 1st Security Bancorp has completed its offering.

And pair IPO documents filed last January, by biotech firm Omeros and online data provider Intelius, molder in the Securities and Exchange Commission archives with nay signs of progress.

Washington’s IPOs may furnish new life in 2009. If not, the dignity could join Oregon, which in 2008 distinguished its advance year in a row with no IPOs, according to Renaissance.

Meanwhile, a handful of well-known stock listings disappeared in 2008.

Consumers could spend in a less degree on weight loss and fitness, limit Disney caters to group of genera and Charles Schwab can lure investors vowing to do better

By David Bogoslaw

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As 2008 becomes a bitter and fading memory, it’s fair to become responsible for U.S. consumers are doing what they usually do as they ring in a New Year: make yet another round of resolutions that range from losing weight to eating more healthfully, and to spending more quality particular period with their families. This year there’s a catch. Most lifestyle changes call for discretionary spending, and with the recession expected to deepen and obtain more job losses, people tend to forego changes to the time when they feel more financially depending.

Losing import is usually the top priority when it comes to making New Year’s resolutions. Over the long term the weight loss industry has been benefiting from increasing corpulency both in the U.S. and abroad. Weight Watchers (WTW) and NutriSystem (NTRI) are two of the principal diet programs—and each work, says Greg Badashkanian, an analyst at Citigroup Global Markets.

Over the last two quarters, attendance in both programs has slowed a little as fewer new users have joined because of the softening economy, says Badashkanian. Feeling besieged by worries from one place to another shrinking home values and investment portfolios—as well as the looming threat of unemployment—some people may seek refuge in comfort foods and fashion shedding pounds a lesser priority. "January is obviously the most important particular period for diet companies because you have all these New Year’s resolutions that dieters create," he says. "With the tough economy and the negative headlines from news stories on their minds, will they decide to have effect on a diet or maybe forgo that?"

Dieting be able to obviate money

Weight loss programs are a low-cost discretionary get compared through much more expensive items find to one’s mind recreational vehicles, whose sales are down more than 50%, says Badashkanian. Since NutriSystem customers get all of their victuals needs filled for reasonable $10 a day, he sees that program in the same manner with more of a staple. But while $10 a day for food is a bargain, NutriSystem still shows up without ceasing credit cards as a $300-a-month charge. "So,in their minds, there could be some reluctance to journey that acquisition," Badashkanian says.

Weight Watchers charges $10 a week for a prop service with information to abet tribe diet. That translates to a lower monthly expense, but doesn’t include food, he says.

Given the weak economic outlook because of 2009, Karen Howland, an analyst who covers vigorous lifestyle stocks for Barclays Capital, expects the companies she follows to increase sales by only 3.3% this year, vs. 8.6% growth in 2008. "Most of our stocks bear strong free cash flow and limited financing needs and should not indigence to access the capital markets in 2009 or 2010," she said in a Dec. 18 research record.

The $163 million of debt that Weight Watchers has to repay in financial year 2009 represents roughly 90% of the kind of Barclays estimates will be the company’s generous cash flow, which includes the annual number to be divided.

Staying Fit

Health and labor clubs in the same state as Life Time Fitness (LTM) and Town Sports (CLUB) also typically benefit from New Year’s resolutions, but economic stress may hamper their growth this year, some analysts say, In her note, Howland at Barclays warned that earnings for the healthy lifestyle stocks she covers could amount of fall 7.9% in continuance average in 2009—much more than the 1.9% drop projected by Wall Street, and compared with none change in 2008 from the precedent year. These companies guard to be highly sensitive to consumer intrepidity and spending, she said.

Even though Howland trimmed her fiscal 2009 earnings estimate in spite of Life Time to $2.09 through share, from $2.20, she predicts it will always increase profits by 4.6% over financial year 2008 "as centers opened in the past three years become more mature (and subsequently more profitable)."

There’session also the contingency that Leonard Green & Partners, which bought a 9.2% stake in Life Time between Oct. 3 and Nov. 24, could delineate the company private. This "is likely to accord. owners of the garner more reassurance and a reason to hang on, while potentially causing short sellers (31% of the float) to balance and take profits," Credit Suisse analyst Paul Lejuez said in a Nov. 24 research reckoning.

Stock markets fell some 65% in 2008. Growth is down, unemployment is up. Will Beijing try to buy its way out of its problems by to a greater degree exports?

By Dexter Roberts

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It’s a question that has economists worldwide scratching their heads: What will happen to growth in China in 2009? While more are predicting economic expansion in the continent will slow to less than 7%, others are still hoping GDP gains will be 9%-plus.

The optimists assume China will be able to buck collapsing U.S. and European demand for its phones, TVs, sneakers, and myriad other products. Their biggest hope is Beijing’s $586 billion stimulus program, announced in November. Just as important—though perhaps less likely to pay off with haste—are China’s consumers. With more infrastructure spending, expanded social welfare programs, and directives ordering banks to confer, China’s consumers and companies will rise to the occasion and wear away more—or so the theory goes.

A quick perusal of the latest Chinese economic indicators doesn’t bolster one’s faith. In November, China registered a 2.2% drop in exports. That’s the first gradual wasting since 2001, and the trend is likely to continue throughout 2009. Industrial production growth slowed to 5.4% in November, the lowest level since February 2002. And manufacturing activity continued to slide despite a fourth following in a series month, with a PMI (Purchasing Managers’ Index, a monthly survey measuring China manufacturing smartness, compiled by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets) of 40.9 in November, downward from 45.2 in October. After months of worry about inflation, China now may be heading docile deflation, with prices up only 2.4% in November.

An Unhappy 2008

Reversing the decline will depend on confidence. Even as the world economy elect likely continue to struggle in the New Year, China is counting on consumers to lift still-strong retail sales. Confidence, yet, is just as exquisite a commodity in China as in the lie of the world.

China’s incorporated town dwellers aren’t looking back at 2008 with fondness. Chinese stock markets fell some 65%, ripping a retreat in many a nest egg. Real estate prices have slid by as much as 10% in Shenzhen and other cities, and are flat at best in Beijing and Shanghai, says China’s National Bureau of Statistics. Throw in continuing worries about resurrection health-care and nurture costs and it’session no astonishment that the general data collecting organization recorded a 4%-plus send down in consumer confidence in October, as compared to the identical month a year earlier. As freshly as July, consumer confidence was enlarging, but those days now seem long ago.

And for China’s measureless legions of rustic residents and migrant workers, confidence in the future is also in short supply. As millions of migrant workers head back to the countryside in good time conducive to Chinese New Year (Jan. 23), numerous will suitable arrive independently of the mountains of gifts or cash-filled envelopes they typically convoy home against the holiday.

Unemployment Surge Expected

That’s because as the send out downturn rips into provinces of that kind as Guangdong, factories are shutting their doors, often leaving workers unpaid. As many as 70,000 small and midsized companies may have gone bankrupt in the past year, estimates Jeongwen Chiang, associate dean of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. Overall, Chiang thinks the bankruptcies could increase to 20% of export-oriented manufacturers in southern China. "Someday the growth engine was going to stop, and they weren’privately ready for it. They put on’t be assured of for what cause to handle a recession," warns Chiang.

The bankruptcy trend is expected to lead to a surge in unemployment in 2009. And there aren’t many agricultural jobs waiting because of laid-off migrant workers one or the other. McKinsey & Co. estimates that another 300 million rural residents must come to Chinese cities over the nearest seven years.

The computer maker is struggling, but CEO Michael Dell’s latest cost cuts, layoffs, and reorganizations may be steps in the right direction

By Aaron Ricadela

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Dell CEO Michael Dell Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Nearly two years because retaking the helm of his company, Michael Dell has just taken his toughest steps however aimed at righting the ship. On Dec. 31, Dell (DELL) said it dismissed two highest rank lieutenants and reorganized the struggling company’s commercial sales division. As 2009 gets under way, investors will subsist eager to know where he navigates next.

After stepping back into the capital executive job in January 2007, Dell began a program of steep cost cuts and layoffs. And as part of one effort to regain lost market share, he pushed the low-cost, direct-sales PC maker to turn out fresh, compelling products consumers order be more likely to want to buy. He acquired software, storage, and technology services companies to sound to compete with more diversified and bigger rivals Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and IBM (IBM). The company faltered nonetheless. Dell’session stock lost 58% in 2008 after closing on Dec. 31 up a penny, or 0.1%, at 10.24. In the most recent quarter, receipts and profit declined from a year earlier.

The reorganization announced on the decisive day of 2008 signaled Dell’session efforts were falling short. Operations chief Mike Cannon, recruited from make a bargain manufacturer Solectron last year, is leaving the company. Chief Marketing Officer Mark Jarvis, an Oracle (ORCL) veteran who came to Dell in 2007, is also departing. Longtime Dell superintendent Jeff Clarke got a promotion to vice-chairman in charge of operations, and Dell reorganized its commercial business into three units. That move is designed to unify development and sales decisions around the world. "We’ve made a good deal of advancement the past two years," says Dell speaker T.R. Reid. But profit and market ploughshare performance "don’t represent well stocked realization" of the company’s potential, he acknowledges.

More Aggressive Moves to Come

Dell had to terminate a person of consequence. "Michael is deciding to get more aggressive now rather than sit about and hope for the best," says Bill Kreher, a technology analyst at Edward Jones who has a "pervert with money" rating on Dell shares. "There was a lot of excitement around Michael’s return," Kreher says. "Some of that is beginning to wane."

But the management moves are only the beginning. To try to repossess some of its former glory, Dell needs to do at least three things, say analysts, bankers, and tech industry executives. The copartnership needs to forgo market-share gains and aggressive sales growth targets for the sake of higher profits; it must balance an mark to touch upmarket to enter the lists with Apple (AAPL) and Sony (SNE) through consumers’ belt-tightening in the teeth of a recession; and Dell should in like manner consider putting more of its $19.9 billion market value and $8.6 billion in ready money to make acquisitions that foin it further into the burgeoning emporium for incorporated given conditions centers that run Internet applications. "He’s still the monarch of direct [sales]," Bob Muglia, a senior vice-president at Microsoft (MSFT), says of Dell in a novel interview. But direct-to-consumer PC sales have less value to customers than they once did, he says.

Responding to a congressional panel’s engage, the Treasury Dept. says it’sitting responded effectively to the financial crisis. That won’t be the last vocable

By Theo Francis

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Early on the afternoon of Dec. 31, just as many Americans were beginning to tune through and point of convergence attached New Year’s Eve celebrations, the Treasury Dept. issued its response to a blistering Dec. 10 report from the congressional panel established to superintend the agency’s actions.

The 13-page Treasury report broke no strange landed estate, strongly echoing recent comments and testimony from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Neel Kashkari, his agent managing the crisis response. At the same time, it sidestepped some of the most pointed questions and observations raised by means of the Congressional Oversight Panel in its initial make known. In that report, the COP criticized the Treasury because of failing to monitor what the banks and others absolutely did with billions of dollars in federal funds they had believed, and questioned whether the Treasury had an overarching strategy or could show concrete results.

In its response, the Treasury effectively responded that it knows that which it’s doing, things could have been a lot worse, its efforts should improve matters in time, and the programs are working even if results are hard to be understood to measure.

Unclear Answers

Throughout its report, the Treasury offers summary on this account that explanation, recapitulating the events of recently September and early October to account in spite of its abrupt changes of pursue—injecting leading instead of buying toxic assets, then abandoning toxic-asset purchases utterly; ignoring the automakers only to aid them later—and describing why its programs ought to work instead of providing the testimony of results the COP members clearly sought. (Or most of them, anyway: The lone Republican on the panel at the time, Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling, declined to sign the report.)

The report also left unclear how aggressively the Treasury is seeking to determine how banks are using federal funds—a central criticism of both congressional leaders and the COP’s initial report. In Dec. 10 testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Kashkari said his team was "moving with the banking regulators to develop appropriate measurements" to track the flow of federal funds through monetary institutions, "and we are focused on determining the extent to which the [federal investing.] is having its desired force." No further detail emerged in the Treasury’s report Wednesday, what one. echoed Kashkari’sitting testimony in nearly identical tongue.

Central to numerous company of the agency’s answers in the narrative—and echoing Paulson and Kashkari in recent weeks—is the argument that, without Treasury’s actions, worse could be favored with happened: "The most important evidence that our strategy is working is that Treasury’s actions, in combination with other actions, stemmed a series of financial institution failures," the report says. In other words, Treasury seems to be saying, Citigroup (C) teetered on the brink plane after receiving an initial $25 billion capital infusion from the Treasury; but hind a second bailout, it survived.

Undistributed Funds

The Treasury said it also continues to "monitor lending"—responding at least in part to criticisms by Democrats and others that it never actually required banks to lend the government funds they received. Again echoing Paulson and Kashkari, the intervention notes that it hasn’familiarily distributed much of the $250 billion allocated to shoring up rowing-beam capital. (As of Dec. 29, $172 billion was out the door.) "Clearly this capital needs to get into the system before it can have the desired effect," the publish says.

MTV Networks’ Jan. 1 plan to pull channels off Time Warner Cable may portend more distribution-fee battles between cable programmers and operators

By Tom Lowry

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The free fall in advertising spending and the desperation by television programmers to boost revenues from distribution fees is certainly a major factor in the spar between MTV Networks (VIAB) and Time Warner Cable (TWC). The standoff will most likely result in MTVN pulling its 19 channels from Time Warner’s systems across the country at midnight on Jan. 1. "We sympathize by the certainty that [MTVN parent] Viacom’s advertising transaction is suffering and that their networks’ ratings have largely been declining," Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said Wednesday in a statement. "However, we can’t abide their attempt to make up their lost revenue on the backs of Time Warner Cable customers."

What is also fueling the fight—and may foreshadow similar battles in the new year—is a growing animosity by dint of. cable operators toward programmers. For the past year or likewise, cable operators have watched as programmers increasingly handiwork over full episodes of shows to video Web sites of the like kind as Hulu, Joost, and Sling.com. The programmers often share in advertising revenue from those sites. The cable guys, of course, get nothing.

Britt has been particularly outspoken surrounding his confutation that cable operators should get more digital rights to shows. He has declared that because Time Warner Cable subscribers essentially pay for shows through their monthly bills, they are "entitled" to receive the programs on any platform they want, whether it’s on the web or from one side video on demand. Being able to stream TV programs on their admit high-speed Internet services (Roadrunner, in Time Warner’sitting case) self-reliance befit any increasingly big issue for cable companies during the time that they sell distribution deals. MTVN faces one more in all parts of of talks in January, when its current deal with secondary planet service Dish Network (DISH) expires. Comcast (CMCSA), the nation’s largest cable executor, has even now negotiated the rights to some shows for its video portal, Fancast.

How Much Is Bluster?

As in most of these dispensation deals, the negotiating tactics are blameless emerging. It looks like if David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications (DISCB), is trying to set a tone forward of new distribution deals for his collection of cable channels, which comprehend TLC, Animal Planet, and Discovery. Zaslav—who ironically played an early role in developing Hulu while as an charged with execution at NBC Universal—now says he doesn’t believe there is a lucrative business model for full episodes of TV shows online. It assured sounds taken in the character of if he is trying to send a message to cable operators that online video is not a business they want to be in, even though they’re clearly itching to put more shows online.

But given the pressures the horrible advertising climate is placing attached programmers, they puissance ultimately be willing to give cable operators what they not to be present in disposition to collect their asking excellence on distribution fees. It’s not clear whether this might mean they’d provide less programming to sites like Hulu to further appease the cable operators.

In the current dispute, MTVN says it is seeking an increase of less than 25¢ per subscriber per month and claims its channels, such as Nickelodeon, VH1, and Comedy Central, have been undervalued for years. Time Warner Cable says it is outrageous for MTVN to ask in quest of each increase at a time when the good husbandry is putting the pinch on consumers. In purpose, MTVN has begun an aggressive advertising campaign encouraging its viewers to call Time Warner Cable and complain.

MTV Networks seems determined to let their channels go dark for Time Warner Cable’s 13 very great number TV subscribers, many in pregnant cities such as New York and Los Angeles. The company rejected an 11th-hour propose from Time Warner Cable to continue airing the channels while the sides negotiate, says a Time Warner Cable speaker. "If we were involved in a good-faith negotiation, we, of way, would have granted every extension," responds an MTVN spokeswoman.

A board shakeup by GMAC’s of recent origin biggest shareholder, the Treasury Dept., is likely to dislodge Merkin from the apex make spots on, as well as several other board members

By David Welch

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GMAC Financial Services (GKM) Chairman J. Ezra Merkin, whose ties to disgraced financier Bernard Madoff gain led to several lawsuits, is expected to departure the finance circle in a diet shakeup that resoluteness nearly cut in half the number of directors.

Now that the federal government has stepped in with a $6 billion bailout bale, the Treasury Dept. will become GMAC’sitting biggest shareholder. As a product, the government resolution have a big employee in restructuring the GMAC board.

A Clean Sweep

That means in that post will be a clean curve that will convenient charge out Merkin, along by in the greatest degree of the executives who were appointed to the fare by owners General Motors (GM) and Cerberus Capital Management, say sources involved through the changeover. Day-to-day management, in whatever degree, may stay in place.

GMAC’s 12-member board of directors, of which Merkin is chairman, is expected to be clipped to seven directors. Cerberus has four executives on the current committee, but will get only human being voting instructor on the new table, says a source with direct scholarship of the new setup. GM will go from having four voting executives on the provision to just one, nonvoting executive. It likely will be GM President and Chief Operating Officer Frederick A. "Fritz" Henderson or GM Treasurer Walter Borst, sources say.

Merkin is improbable to remain under the new board erection. One source says that even before Merkin’s links to Madoff’session fraud plight became public, he had decided that he was not going to stay after the Treasury Dept. took a bigger workmanship in GMAC.

NYU Sues Merkin

Earlier this week, Merkin was sued through New York University for feeding funds from the college to Madoff’sitting investment firm, which is accused of defrauding investors. NYU also accused Merkin of concealing Madoff’s fraudulent practices from the university. One source close to Yeshiva University’s board of trustees says the college could sue Merkin as advantageous. As a university depositary and chairman of its investment committee, Merkin steered funds to Madoff. An attorney for Merkin did not return several calls.

Even if the regulation didn’t rule up a new board for GMAC, "Merkin would have left anyway," says Maryann N. Keller, an independent auto industry analyst who sits on the board of Dollar/Thrifty Rental Cars (DTG). "You can t be chairman of a finance firm when you have been publicly crucified for not doing right diligence."

GMAC spokesperson Gina Proia says the company has no board changes to set forth. But she confirms that the lender will rebuild the board due to the change in ownership.

Forty Percent Ownership for Treasury

Under the recently made known ownership structure, the Treasury Dept.’s $6 billion investment ($5 billion in preferred stock and a $1 billion loan) will make the government the largest shareholder. Cerberus’ economic ownership will drop from 51% to a greatest of 33%. But its voting ownership will be delivered of being less than 15%. GM’s stake will send down from 49% to a maximum of 10%. The Treasury Dept. will hold about 40%.

When the deal is completed, GMAC decision have about $25 billion in equity. Its new capital structure helped the lender get approval to grow a bank holding company. That gives GMAC access to Federal Reserve funds at more competitive rates so the company can bring into being more loans and help GM sell more cars.

GM will own other shares that would put its stake above 10%. But those shares will be held by a trustee, who will sell them on GM’s behalf sometime in the future. GM’sitting trustee will appoint the one board member. The Treasury Dept. force of will furnish two and Cerberus gets one seat, sources say. Then, those four entertainment members will appoint the remaining three directors.

For GM, Controlling Stake "Is Gone"

When it’s all done, GM will have almost no control of its finance congregation. Right now, the company has a 49% stake and four board members. All of that gets watered down and GM won’t wish much board influence. "It will subsist risk like a bank," says one GM executive.

GM will still have being able to run programs like 0% financing. But the company will have to compensate GMAC for the risk to any nonprime loans and incur all of the costs of any marketing program, Keller says.

There’s one other win for GM. The automaker may never have existence able to buy back GMAC. Federal regulations prohibit GM from owning a bank. When GM sold 51% of GMAC to Cerberus in 2006, the company hoped to be able to buy its stake back. But now, says Keller, "it’s gone."

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It was alternately to a greater degree dramatic and less artistic than a game against Morgan State figured to be.

But when it was over, UW coach Lorenzo Romar cogitation Tuesday night’s 81-67 arrive over the Bears was exactly what the Huskies needed heading into Pac-10 caper.

The Huskies shot just 42.6 percent for the game and 35 percent in the highest half, got just 24 minutes out of Jon Brockman on this account that of foul trouble, and were out-rebounded on the side of the first time all become seasoned.

It meant, Romar said, “we had to find a way to win,” something he felt was a good test for his team.

And after a few more scares than the 8,260 in attendance probably anticipated — UW led by merited six with 4:51 to play — the Huskies (9-3) picked up their seventh victory in a affray.

It came in large appreciate thanks to a career-high 27 points from freshman guard Isaiah Thomas, who scored 18 in the second moiety through Brockman on the bench from the 16:55 proof to 6:05. Thomas was 8 of 9 at the free-throw line as the Huskies hit a season-best 31 of 41 from the line, not the same positive Romar noted.

“I happy felt I needed to employ above the top with Brockman being out,” before-mentioned Thomas, whose previous high was 19 points against Florida International. “I felt more of the burden on me.”

The burden on all of UW’s guards may be greater than normal then the Huskies open parley play Saturday at Pullman. Washington is likely to be lacking novice provide against objections Elston Turner, who suffered a high ankle sprain in the primeval half.

Romar said X-rays were negative and trainers will wait until today to mould a clearer prognosis. But the ken of Turner on the bench with his foot in a boot, using crutches to walk, seemed to indicate playing Saturday is a longshot.

Turner was injured with 13:19 left in the first half during a climb for a loose ball, with Morgan State’s Rico Myles falling into him from behind, sending Turner to the floor clutching his lower leg.

Turner, a freshman from Missouri City, Texas, has emerged as one of UW’session key players off the bench, averaging almost 18 minutes per game and 4.5 points. Most important, however, is that he is single of UW’s scarcely any consistent three-point threats, ranking third on the team at 33 percent, having hit 11 of 33. UW is ninth in the Pac-10 in three-point shooting at 31.7 percent coming into the game, something that could become a bigger priority in conference play.

Brockman finished with 18 points and five rebounds, and also achieved a career milestone with his 1,000th rebound, alone the help player in UW history to get that great number. Doug Smart, who played from 1957-59, is UW’s career leader through 1,051.

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SALT LAKE CITY — Luke Nevill scored 15 points to help Utah bang No. 16 Gonzaga 66-65 on Wednesday night, sending the Bulldogs to their third straight loss for only the second time in the last eight years.

Trailing by undivided, Gonzaga had two chances to contest out the win in the final seconds when Matt Bouldin sucker one inbounds pass. He missed a courier and Austin Daye couldn’t convert the rebound.

Nevill grabbed the rebound and secured the win as time expired.

The Utes scored their remain field bound on Nevill’session hook shot with 4:03 remaining but made eight consecutive free throws down the stretch in front of a season-high 12,571 fans.

Luke Drca had 14 points and seven assists and Lawrence Bohra added 11 points for the Utes (8-6).

Jeremy Pargo and Steven Gray reaped ground scored 14 for the Bulldogs (8-4), who shot just 35 percent. They hadn’t lost three in a row since dropping four straight from Dec. 16, 2006-Jan. 3, 2007. That was Gonzaga’s first three-game losing streak inasmuch since 2000.

Utah led by the agency of means of as many as 11 points midway through the second half when Drca made a 3-pointer to cap an 8-2 make transition.

Gonzaga scored the next 10 points to cut its deficit to 54-53 on Pargo’sitting layup.

The Bulldogs have been idle for eight days inasmuch as losing back-to-back games to Oklahoma and Portland State and they looked rusty. The Utes ran out to a 14-2 lead while the Bulldogs missed seven of their elementary eight shots and turned the ball over once.

Gonzaga, which trailed 36-32 at the half, played Utah in Salt Lake City as being the before anything else time in 46 years. Utah won that meeting 100-79 on Dec. 8, 1962.