Because of injuries, a travel-heavy schedule and their own shortcomings on the court, the Bucks lacked consistency as their record plunged to six games below .500 two weeks ago.

But coach Scott Skiles' Bucks are now in the midst of their most prosperous stretch of the season. They will take a four-game home winning streak into their game against the Utah Jazz tonight at the Bradley Center and have won four of five overall. With a home game Saturday against Detroit looming along with a couple on the road next week in Texas, the Bucks are trying to maintain the consistency they have started to exhibit since returning from a disastrous 0-3 Western trip two weeks ago.

"We can't get happy with what we did, winning four out of five," guard Charlie Bell said. "We've got to continue to try and get better. We've got a tough game with Utah and after that we've got Detroit and then we've got San Antonio and Houston, so it doesn't get any easier. We've got to continue to work in practice and continue to remember what's getting us wins. We can't think about offense or whatever else is going on. Our defense is getting us wins."

Said guard Tyronn Lue: "It's just being consistent every night. Like Scott says, you want to win the game but if you don't win the game, it's about how you play within your principles and the system. If we can do that every night consistently, then we're going to win games."

The Bucks are 4-0 at home in December with those victories over Chicago, Charlotte, Indiana and the Los Angeles Clippers. True, the Clippers were playing their fourth game in five nights on the road and were running on fumes Saturday but the Bucks might have relaxed for such a game in past seasons and let it slip away. Milwaukee beat Los Angeles by 34 points after leading by as many as 44 in the fourth quarter.

In their four-game home winning streak, the Bucks have averaged 109.5 points on 49.5% shooting and limited the opposition to 93.5 points on 43.2% shooting. The Bucks outrebounded the opposition by more than nine per game and averaged 26 assists per game, five more than their season average.

"For longer stretches, we're doing what we want to get done on the defensive end," Skiles said. "Because we've been a good rebounding team, when we're getting stops, we've been able to get it out and get some easy baskets. So we're scoring a little bit more.

"We're still not where we're going to be maybe in six weeks or something like that defensively, but we're able now to play 8 or 9 consecutive minutes of pretty high-caliber defense."

Getting healthy has helped also. Six Bucks have missed games with injuries but forward Malik Allen (sprained rib) is the only player currently injured and he might return tonight against Utah.

"Our energy has definitely been up," Lue said. "Guys are back healthy. Things are starting to click again with Michael (Redd) and Richard (Jefferson), and Luke Ridnour has been playing great. (Andrew) Bogut has been playing great. As long as the team plays with energy, we'll win a lot of games because the energy turns into our defense. A lot of times, we're not making shots but if we can just stay consistent with our defensive end, we'll be OK."

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