St. George, Utah is the fastest-growing metro area in America, and its basketball program is growing just as fast. The 2025-26 Utah Tech Trailblazers went 19-15 with an 11-7 WAC record, head coach Jon Judkins was named WAC Coach of the Year, and the season closed with the program playing its best basketball at the Orleans Arena in March. Now comes the pivot that changes everything: 2026-27 is Utah Tech's first season in the Big Sky Conference. Thirteen of the school's 16 sports move to the new league on July 1, 2026 — men's basketball among them — and the Trailblazers' Big Sky debut comes Dec. 3 at Burns Arena against Weber State, the in-state rival that makes the new conference feel like home from day one.
The Big Sky move, announced in June 2025 alongside Southern Utah, is the culmination of a two-decade climb. Utah Tech — Dixie State until the 2022 rebrand — has been an NCAA member for 20 seasons, the last five at the Division I level, and officially completed its full D1 transition last summer. The WAC it leaves behind has shrunk to five members; the Big Sky, founded in 1963, offers regional rivalries with charter members Idaho, Idaho State, Montana and Montana State plus Weber State. For a program that spent its D1 infancy as a geographic outlier, the new league is a homecoming. The 2026-27 schedule leans into the fresh start: the season opens at New Mexico on Nov. 2, swings through Utah State on Nov. 10, Cal on Nov. 14 and Washington on Nov. 19, then the Big Sky slate begins — Weber State, Idaho State, a New Year's Eve trip to defending tournament champion Idaho, and a Jan. 7 home date with Portland State, the 2026 regular-season champs.
Judkins is the constant through all of it. Now in his 21st season at the helm — 341 career wins and counting — he took the job when the school was still finding its NCAA footing and has coached it through Division II to Division I to a new conference. The WAC Coach of the Year honor in 2025-26 was overdue recognition for the architect of the program's D1 rise: his Trailblazers won 19 games in 2022-23 (10-8 in the WAC, the best D1-era record at the time) and set program records in 2023-24 with 327 made three-pointers — first in the WAC, sixth in the nation — plus 2,343 points, 116 in a single game, and the fewest turnovers in school history at 420. The formula is unmistakable: shoot it, share it, don't turn it over.
The 2025-26 team embodied the formula. Ethan Potter, the senior forward, was a First Team All-WAC selection and a preseason All-WAC pick who delivered all year — double figures in 27 of 32 games, seven double-doubles, 20 or more points in ten contests. Beside him, transfer guard Noah Bolanga — a native of Poitiers, France who came via St. Bonaventure — made the All-WAC Second Team, averaging 12.3 points and 5.9 rebounds while launching the second-most threes in the league. Sophomore guard Chance Trujillo matched Bolanga at 12.3 a night and led the team in assists and made threes early in the year. Freshman Davis earned All-WAC Freshman Team honors — the third straight season a Trailblazer made the team, following Aric Demmings (2023-24) and Madiba Owona (2024-25) — with 7.5 points and 3.2 rebounds over 31 games and a steal rate that ranked seventh in the WAC. The pipeline is producing.
Burns Arena is the program's not-so-secret weapon. Since joining the NCAA ranks in 2006-07, Utah Tech is 149-86 (.634) in 235 games on its home floor, and the Trailblazers have won eight or more home games in six of their last eight seasons. The 2025-26 slate featured a program-record 17 home games, with 22 of 28 contests played inside Utah. When the three-ball is falling in St. George — and under Judkins, it usually is — Burns Arena becomes one of the toughest small gyms in the West to escape.
The new era has new questions. Can the nation's most prolific three-point attack translate to the Big Sky's grind? Can Potter's production be replaced? Can Judkins, the program's only D1-era coach, build a contender in a league where Montana, Weber State and Northern Colorado have been stockpiling talent for decades? The Trailblazers open the Big Sky era with momentum — a 19-win season, a Coach of the Year, an All-WAC core — and a schedule that tests them immediately. The name on the jersey changed in 2022. The conference changes in 2026. The ambition hasn't changed at all: Utah Tech is done being the new program. In the Big Sky, the Trailblazers intend to be a problem from opening night.