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‘The Utes were on F-I-R-E fire:’ Parker Van Dyke narrates an adventurous season

Utah’s senior guard has provided highlights on and off the court.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Utes guard Parker Van Dyke (5) celebrates after hitting his 5th 3-point shot of the first half, in PAC-12 action between Utah Utes and Arizona Wildcats at the Jon M. Huntsman Center, Thursday, Feb. 14. 2019

The Utah Utes know how they want the Pac-12 basketball schedule to end this week. They need two home-court wins and two more of Parker Van Dyke’s sportscasting narrations to punctuate an adventurous season with a top-four finish in the conference and a successful sendoff for him and the program’s three other graduating players.

The postgame tradition after victories started in January when the Utes visited the Pac-12 Networks studio in San Francisco. Kory Mortensen, the athletic department’s creative/new media specialist, asked for a player to go on the set and discuss the previous night’s win at Stanford. His teammates prodded Van Dyke, who’s a business economics major, but has some interest in sportscasting after his basketball career ends.

The next day, Van Dyke summarized a win at California with a video clip, and has done so after subsequent victories with a style he describes as “a lot of nonsense.”

After a victory at USC that included his clutch 3-pointer, Van Dyke announced, “The Utes were on F-I-R-E fire!”

He’s mimicking the ESPN anchors he grew up watching, and he made “SportsCenter” himself with his buzzer-beating 3-pointer for the 93-92 win at UCLA. Van Dyke’s account of that game: “Incredible, sensational, magnificent, marvelous, whatever three-to-four-syllable word want to use … I can’t believe it. Bill Walton can’t believe it. No one can believe it.”

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