Aggies looking to move past loss to Pacific
After crumbling in the final minute of Saturday’s game against Pacific, Utah State head coach Stew Morrill is interested in seeing how his team will respond.
“I know how I expect them to respond and that’s to move on,” he said. “Learn from it, flush it, go play and do whatever you can to win the next ball game.”
Morrill and his staff will break down the last 50 seconds of Saturday’s game this week, but he said the task at hand isn’t Pacific; it’s UC Riverside.
In their last meeting, the Ags handed the Highlanders a 77-52 loss in the Spectrum. But Morrill said Riverside has improved substantially since that Jan. 22 meeting and will be a difficult opponent on the road.
“They’ve been very solid at home,” Morrill said. “I’ve been down there before and got beat. So I know you can get beat anywhere.”
Riverside is 8-14 on the season, but 6-4 at home. Morrill said he expects a physical, defensive battle Thursday.
Against Cal State Fullerton, Morrill said he expects another hard-fought road game Saturday. The Titans are 13-8 on the season and, despite a 77-52 Aggie victory earlier this year in the Spectrum, Morrill said that on the road anything can happen.
“When we played them earlier, they had been struggling defensively,” Morrill said. “They’ve really improved along those lines … When you get in the Titan Gym a lot of weird things can happen.”
With the loss to No. 19 Pacific Saturday, the Aggies now find themselves in third place in the Big West Conference. Morrill said the goal for the rest of the season is to finish as high in the conference as possible.
“Obviously, with tournament byes, the higher you can finish it’s an advantage,” he said. “You want to finish as high as possible and right now it’s trying to get into that second place spot.”
Thursday’s game against Riverside will tip off at 8:05 p.m. and Saturday’s game will start at 3:05 p.m.
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