Season's best fourth quarter carries Wolves to victory

For three quarters, it was the same. Give and take. Push and shove. Hit and run. There were 15 ties, 12 lead changes, and countless picks and elbows. You play the Utah Jazz and you're going to get hit.

So the Wolves hit back. Hard.

Two days after a fourth-quarter collapse against Dallas, the Wolves had their best final quarter of the season, a 39-point barrage that broke open a tight game and pushed the Wolves to a 111-100 victory. Oh, and it proved what the Wolves have believed for a while now:

"It showed again that if we go out and play hard we can play with anybody," said Al Jefferson, one of four Wolves players with 20 or more points -- a first this season. "We beat a real good team tonight. A well-coached team. A team that had won a lot of games lately. But if we play like we played tonight, we can beat anybody."

Hard to argue. Especially after Jefferson had 22 points and 10 rebounds. After Ryan Gomes had scored 16 of his 20 points and gotten 10 of his 11 rebounds after halftime. After Randy Foye, up and down since his return to action from a knee injury, had scored a season-high 20 points and Rashad McCants got 22 off the bench.

This against a Utah team that had won 14 of 16 entering Tuesday's game.

"We played 40 good minutes against Dallas on Sunday," said Gomes, who carried the Wolves in the third quarter and helped bury the Jazz in the fourth. "Then, in the final eight minutes, we gave it away. We didn't want to play that way again."

And so, in the fourth quarter the Wolves dominated at both ends. On offense, they shot 11-for-20 from the field and got to the free-throw line 18 times. On defense, they figured out Carlos Boozer -- holding him to five meaningless points after he'd scored 29 through the first three quarters -- and held the Jazz to 6-for-21 shooting.

The Wolves have lost 12 games this season when they were tied or leading entering the fourth quarter.

"It was a hell of a win for us," Wolves coach Randy Wittman said. "This had been a tough team for us to play against the last three, four years. This is a team that, if you don't match or surpass their physical play, you don't have a chance. I thought our guys stepped it up from the beginning."

And especially at the end. The result was the Wolves' second victory over Utah in its past eight tries.

Down 74-73 early in the fourth quarter, the Wolves pushed back. Jefferson had two free throws, and it was followed by a fast-break jam by Kirk Snyder -- who played very well in his Timberwolves debut, playing strong defense and contributing at key times on offense. Then a three-pointer by Foye kept the Wolves going on an 11-2 run that ended with Gomes' layup from Snyder's sweet pass for an 84-76 lead with eight minutes left, forcing a Utah timeout. Snyder's reverse layup coming out of that timeout made the lead 10.

The Wolves wouldn't let the Jazz back in the game. The same four players who finished with 20 or more for the game had seven or more in the fourth quarter. This was a balanced effort from the beginning.

The Wolves forced the Jazz into a season-high 24 turnovers, won on the boards, in the paint, on second-chance points and on the fast break.

"It didn't matter what was going on," Utah coach Jerry Sloan said. "In the half-court they got a piece of it, and they beat us on the offensive boards. ... They wanted the game more than we did."

Get used to this. The Wolves will face Utah three more times between now and April 2. Three more battles to go. But the Wolves won this one.

"We answered every call," Wittman said.

Forward Antoine Walker still hopes he and the team can come to an agreement on a buyout that would allow him to clear waivers and join another team by March 1. "We're talking, both sides," Walker said. "We're trying to figure out a number that will work for both sides." Wolves owner Glen Taylor said negotiations have not gotten to the point where he would get involved.

The issue, of course, is money. By comparison, when the Wolves bought out Juwan Howard at the end of October, he received $10 million of the $14-plus million he was owed for the final two seasons of his contract. "They know how to get it done," Taylor said. Walker was inactive for the third consecutive game.