Not exactly playoff grade, but ...

The Utah Jazz has defeated every NBA team this season, a distinction it shares only with the Boston Celtics. It also has lost an alarming number of games to a collection of opponents that Jazz star Deron Williams recently termed "bottom feeders."

If the Timberwolves sustain the fourth-quarter proficiency they have demonstrated these last three weeks of March and in Sunday's 110-103 victory at Target Center, they soon might no longer be compared with creepy catfish.

The Wolves lost eight of the first 13 times they led going into the fourth quarter this season. They now have won the past four games in which they led after three quarters and are 10-4 in that category since winning at Golden State on Jan. 21, the demarcation line in a season they started 5-34.

"We've grown up," Wolves center Al Jefferson said.

They won seven games in March, are 14-19 since that Jan. 21 game, and Sunday's victory was their second over the Jazz at home in five weeks.

"We're getting better and better," Jefferson said. "To win like this two times in a row over them at home says a lot."

On Sunday, the Wolves faced a Utah team -- owner of the league's best home record but suspect on the road -- that was without starters Andrei Kirilenko (injured) and Mehmet Okur (ill) and desperate to secure first-round, home-court advantage with only eight games left in its regular season.

The Wolves took Marko Jaric's running shot high off the backboard glass and an ensuing 76-74 lead just before the third-quarter buzzer and carried the momentum into the fourth quarter. Then they executed more proficiently than a Jazz team that has been doing that to its opponents almost ever since Jerry Sloan became head coach in December 1988.

"Down the stretch, we made plays," Wolves coach Randy Wittman said. "We made big baskets. We made hustle plays. We made plays that win games."

Wittman kept reserves Rashad McCants and Kirk Snyder, moved out of the starting lineup Sunday after 13 consecutive starts, on the floor for the entire fourth quarter and paired them down the stretch with Jefferson, Ryan Gomes and Marko Jaric, who moved from shooting guard to play point guard against Williams, Utah's sizable point guard.

McCants vexed Utah's defense repeatedly on pick-and-roll plays, and Snyder led the way with the hustle plays. His putback basket of McCants' long, forced shot just before the 24-second buzzer was pivotal in a 13-4 run that turned a tied game into an 89-80 lead with 8:24 remaining.

In the final minute, Snyder displayed patience and smarts before finishing off a frantic exchange with a slashing basket that he turned into a three-point play and a decisive 104-98 lead with 44.2 seconds left.

Wittman moved rookie Corey Brewer back into the starting lineup for the first time since he injured his thigh in a March 2 loss to Seattle and brought Snyder off the bench in part because he said he wanted Snyder to guard Jazz reserve Matt Harpring.

Brewer responded with an efficient 16-point, seven-rebound, three-assist game and didn't play a minute in the fourth quarter, when Wittman stuck with Snyder and the lineup that had built that nine-point lead.

• Afterward, somebody asked Snyder, who played his first NBA season with the Jazz, about his history playing against Harpring, the ninth-year forward from George Tech.

"I have a history of getting bloody lips from him," Snyder said, smiling to display a fresh one received Sunday. "Every time we play, he thinks he has to hit me in the mouth. I don't even worry about it anymore, because I know I'm going to get one.

"I had to get stitches after one practice with him. He's a physical specimen, kind of like myself."