Deficit means nothing to Aggies in BracketBuster win
Don’t give up, and have some pride.
That is what the Aggies used to overcome a slow start and an 18-point deficit to come back and win 71-65 on the road against Oral Roberts in an ESPN BracketBuster game Saturday, Feb. 17.
Oral Roberts started the game on fire and jumped out to a 14-0 lead nearly five minutes into the game.
“They were basically making shot after shot and it looked like we could get beat by 40,” Head Coach Stew Morrill said in a radio interview after the game. “In timeout, we just talked about competing and playing harder and not giving in and not giving up and chipping away at the lead, and we basically did that. I am proud of our kids for finding a way to win against a very good Oral Roberts team that is walking away with their conference.”
Unfortunately for the Aggies, the Golden Eagles continued to shoot lights out and built a 22-4 lead after having only played eight minutes of the game. For junior guard Jaycee Carroll and the rest of the Aggies, they had seen enough.
Carroll scored 10 points and fueled a 24-9 Aggie run that brought the score to within three, 31-28, at halftime.
“I think looking at the scoreboard and seeing a zero by our name for so long is just not a good feeling, and then seeing a 22 and a 4, it gets to you a little bit,” Carroll said. “I think that was all it took – a glance at the scoreboard – to realize that we weren’t playing really well. We weren’t playing like Utah State and like we wanted to on ESPN.”
Oral Robert’s big man Caleb Green had his way for most of the first half as he scored 16 points before the break.
“He is a man child inside, and he is such a good player. We were doubling and playing man, and then zone did help us do some help on him,” Morrill said.
USU switched to a zone and a quarter court press that slowed down Oral Roberts and made them work harder at getting shots.
“We came out a little flat, so our zone helped us out,” Carroll said. “It kind of confused them a little bit, and we were able to claw our way back into it.”
One of the keys to slowing down Green and only allowing him to score five points in the second half was the defensive play of junior center Arvydas Vaitiekus.
“With his size, Caleb Green couldn’t turn around so easily and kind of just threw it over us. He had to really look at Arvydas, and Arvydas really changed his shot, and lots of times that’s all it takes to get him out of sync a little bit and frustrate him,” Carroll said.
Picking up the defense as well as executing smartly on offense were reasons the Aggies were able to cut the lead down by so much.
“We started executing a little bit offensively,” Morrill said. “We hit them with some back screens where we were rolling hard, and they weren’t able to cover the basket and we got some easy baskets. That helped us get the thing within striking range at halftime.”
The Aggies started the second half with a 5-0 run to claim their first lead of the game at 33-31.
“We came out after halftime and I really felt, and a bunch of us felt, that they will start with the ball. We get a stop, go down and score and we will take the lead and that will be it, and we will keep the lead from there on out,” Carroll said.
That is exactly what the Aggies did. USU was able to get up by as much as nine and then were able to hit free throws down the stretch to hang onto the lead.
“Second half, we come and win the battle of the boards and basically executed pretty well. And let’s be honest, we hit some tough shots at the end of the clock,” Morrill said. “You got to do that to win on the road. Some things have got to go your way.”
Both junior guard Kris Clark and senior forward Chris Session were able to hit tough shots in the second half at the end of the shot clock to stop Oral Roberts from gaining any momentum.
With just more than seven minutes remaining in the game and the Aggies leading by five, Clark had the ball at the top of the key and did a crossover dribble to send off a 3-pointer that gave the Aggies an eight-point lead.
Then with three minutes left in the game and Oral Roberts down by seven, Session hit a tough jumper as the shot clock expired.
“I got the ball and was looking to make a play, and they knocked it away from me right into Session’s hand, and he put up a great shot,” Carroll said. “It was a tough shot. It was a contested shot, fading away and it went in, and from there on out I felt like we had it.”
Although Carroll led the way with 25 points on 9-16 shooting, it was a team effort and everyone did his part to win.
Senior forward Durrall Peterson scored 11 points and pulled down seven rebounds while Clark scored nine points and dished out five assists with no turnovers.
“We had a lot of guys who had a role in this victory,” Morrill said.
The win gives the Aggies 20 on the year, which means this is the eighth year in a row for USU to record at least 20 wins.
“To get our 20th win on the road is special, especially in this environment and in the Bracketbusters,” Morrill said.
Morrill said the team has improved in many areas and said he feels they need to continue to get better.
“I was hard on this team earlier in the year, practice habits and defensively, and some of the things that we weren’t doing that we needed to do to have a chance to win some games. At that time, I’m not sure I would have imagined this team would get to 20 wins, so I am really proud of this group and they should feel good about it. But we got a lot of basketball left to play,” Morrill said.
-samabry@cc.usu.edu