For most of the Cowboys, the trip to Salt Lake City will be a first.

Not so for Mike Saunders.

Last season Saunders was playing his college basketball just down the road from the Delta Center, the home of the NBA’s Utah Jazz and site of McNeese State’s first-round Midwest Regional game on the NCAA Tournament Thursday night against Gonzaga.

Saunders was a guard at Utah and enjoyed a measure of success. He scored a career-high 23 points against No. 3 UCLA, coming off the bench to torch the Bruins in a Pac-12 game.

While his home games were on the SLC campus, he couldn’t help but dream about playing in the plush Delta Center.

Now he gets his chance.

“Strange, it’s just crazy how things work out,” Saunders said. “I never would have guessed, when this season started, I would be playing back in Utah.”

The junior guard, who started his college career with two seasons at Cincinnati before transferring to Utah for a season and finally, last summer, joining the Cowboys, admitted the trip back to Salt Lake City is a bit weird.

“No way I figured we would be heading there,” Saunders said. “Then, as the brackets kept going past us it was starting to feel like

maybe, just maybe, it could happen.”

Saunders, who also played two years of high school basketball in Utah, could have had another homecoming. He grew up in Indianapolis, the site of another first two rounds.

“That would have been nice,” Saunders said. “I have more family there.”

Still, he will have more than a couple of friends to see but he said he isn’t planning on spending time with them.

“This is a business trip,” said Saunders, who averaged 4.1 points in 18 games for the Utes. “I’m going to be focused completely on what we are doing and getting us this win.”

Saunders’ time at McNeese has been up and down. He was slowed at the start by an injury and waiting clearance from the NCAA.

After both issues cleared up Saunders, produced good moments but not as many as he would have liked.

He is averaging 5.9 points in 17 games, playing just under 17 minutes an outing. He has shown flashes of what he can do, like scoring his McNeese-high 20 in his second game with the Cowboys at Incarnate Word.

He says he would love to experience one of those type games at the Delta Center.

“I just want to do my part,” Saunders said. “To play a team like Gonzaga, who I grew up watching, that would be something. To beat them would be great.”

And doing it in Salt Lake City would make it all the more special.

“It would be coming full circle,” he said. “It is just strange to even think about.”