Long time Utah coach Jerry Sloan denied rumors on Monday that he is considering retirement.

"Nothing is any different than it's always been at this stage of the year," Sloan said prior to his team's practice at the Zions Bank Basketball Center.

Sloan is in his 17th year as the Jazz head coach and this season his streak of 16 straight winning seasons is set to come to a close.  So is the 63-yar-old Sloan discouraged?

?I think this could be a fairly decent team, if a couple of things had happened," he said. Truth be told, Sloan probably considered retirement more seriously last year than he is right now. His wife, Bobbye, was in the middle of a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer. She died in June.
 
"Last year was probably tougher," he said.