Aggies prepare to take on Denver Wednesday
The Utah State Aggies (4-1) have a huge road test this week starting with the Denver University Pioneers tonight. The Aggies just barely squeaked out a win over the Northeastern Huskies on Saturday night, and they will need to improve their game on both ends of the court. The Pioneers (1-5) from the Sun Belt Conference are struggling to start the season, but Aggie head coach Stew Morrill hopes his squad won’t look past the Pioneers with a huge match-up against Big East powerhouse No. 16 Georgetown looming.
“You look at their record and you say they won 17 homes games last year, but they are off to a rough start,” Morrill said. “They have played some pretty good teams on the road, and they have only played two home games. I think their record is a little deceptive. Right now if our players look at that game before they look at Denver, they are not very smart based on how they played the other night.”
The way the Aggies played the other night against the Huskies was somewhat embarrassing. The Aggies shot 38 percent from the field and 16 percent from 3-point range. What leaves coach Morrill still scratching his head is that many of those shots were uncontested jump shots.
“We missed 16 wide-open jump shots, 13 of them were 3’s and the others were jump shots inside the 3-point line,” Morrill said. “It was real ironic to me that we had that many guys miss shots all in the same night, and still found a way to win. Obviously I thought we were lucky and didn’t deserve to win necessarily, but we did win and I am going to remind those kids today that they did a good job finding a way to win under the circumstances.”
Both games this week will be televised, but what’s even more intriguing is that both Denver and Georgetown play a similar type of offensive system. Not only is the offensive system similar, but it is a complex system that the Aggies are not very familiar with.
“They do a great job of running you around and back-dooring you for lay-ups and setting flare screens for jumpers,” Morrill said. “If they get a bunch of lay-ups, they’re probably going to beat you. You really have to adjust your defense to try and guard it. If you play standard defensive rules, they hurt you. It’s kind of and odd preparation. They do such a good job of hurting normal defensive rules. You have to adjust.”
One huge adjustment will be for the Aggie guards who will be defending the Pioneer’s guards in the post. Junior guards Brian Stafford and Travis Hallam lead with the Pioneers in scoring with 15 and 14 points a game respectively, and they will be a load for the Aggie backcourt.
“What is really interesting in the system is they post guards a lot,” Morrill said. “Whether our guards can play post defense, first of all keep the ball out of there, and second of all guarding them without fouling them, and without letting them score it every time. Guards are not used to defending the post as much as the big guys. Both Stafford and Hallam are going to test our guards in that regard.”
Sophomore guard E.J Farris will be one of the Aggie guards who will need to brush up on his post defense. Farris saw his first minutes of the regular season against Northeastern, and he took full advantage of that playing time as he finished 1-of-1 shooting from the 3-point line and 2-of-2 shooting from the free-throw stripe. After his confident shooting performance, coach Morrill will be playing Farris at the back-up point guard position above freshman guard James Walker.
“We will probably stick with him and especially when you consider that he is a very confident shooter, and we are having a little trouble shooting the ball,” Morrill said. “It makes sense.”
Game-time is slated for 7:05 p.m. from the Magness Arena in Denver, Colo. The game can be seen on Fox Sports Rocky Mountain. For a full breakdown of the game, visit utahstatesman.com.
– ty.d.hus@aggiemail.usu.edu