Only a week ago, the Jazz were eight games over .500 and moving up in the playoff pecking order.

Today, Utah is ninth in the West, a full game behind No. 8 Dallas, 1? games behind No. 7 Phoenix and 5? games behind Denver in the Northwest Division.

If the playoffs started tonight, the Jazz would not be included for only the fourth time since 1984.

"I wouldn't hit the panic button, but we're kind of in must-win situations now," said Ronnie Brewer, who had 23 points against the Spurs.

"There are still a lot of games left. You have a lot of games after the All-Star break. Teams can get hot. But we've got to turn the switch on somewhere. We can't wait and say, 'When Booz gets back, we'll turn it around.' We've got to be ready to play now. We've got to beat the teams we're supposed to beat."

Veteran Matt Harpring agreed.

"We can get it back ? ." he said. "Sooner or later, you start running out of time. [But] right now, there are still a lot of games to be played. So it's not like we've run out of time yet."

Asked what the mood of the Jazz is after their recent slide, Harpring said: "I don't really know. I hope we're disappointed. We've lost, what, four in a row now? That's tough. We're coming down to crunch time soon now, and you want to be playing your best Basketball going into that."

For the Jazz, the loss to San Antonio was their first in 13 home games this season against a Western Conference opponent.

"You can't say, 'Oh, we can take something out of this game. They're a good team and we played them close,'" Brewer said. "I mean, you came up short and still lost. We're disappointed about it, especially for our fans. ... We competed hard but we just came up a little short."

Jazz coach Jerry Sloan doled out minutes as if this were a critical game, but to no avail.

Every starter played at least 38 minutes. Deron Williams played 44.

"We're stretched out as far as we can go with this team ? ." Sloan said. "I put us in a bind, probably. But Deron is a young guy and he can play that kind of minutes and Memo is a young guy.

"All the guys I had out there that played significant minutes -- C.J. Miles played 42. They all played a lot of minutes. But there are going to be times when that happens. I don't have a problem with that. They played as hard as they could."

Can the Jazz regroup and get themselves back in the playoff race?

"That's what Basketball is about -- the hard knocks of Basketball," Sloan said. "You get a real quick understanding when things aren't going your way, you've got to fight to get out of it. [But] I thought they fought to win the ballgame. I wouldn't have been pleased if they hadn't."

luhm@sltrib.com