Sophomore stars on Men’s Basketball Senior Night
Senior Night became a memorable one thanks to the efforts of a sophomore Saturday night.
Preston Medlin scored a career-high 32 points and pulled down eight rebounds to lead USU to a 67-50 comeback win over Idaho in front of a near sell-out crowd at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum.
“Good Senior Night, obviously,” USU head coach Stew Morrill said. “We got way down, and I am real proud of our guys for hanging in there mentally and playing. We had a really good crowd. It was good to see the Spectrum crowd like it usually is. That was certainly a factor. We got going, and the crowd got going.”
For the first 16 minutes, Idaho dominated USU in nearly every aspect of the game. Former Aggie Deremy Geiger scored the first five points for the Vandals, and Idaho pushed the advantage five minutes into the first half.
Medlin hit five consecutive points — his only points of the first half — to cut Idaho’s lead 10-7, but the Vandals responded with a 19-7 run over the next nine minutes of the game.
“I thought that in the first half we played really well for about the first 15 minutes,” Idaho head coach Don Verlin said. “We made a couple mistakes there at the end, letting them go on an 8-0 run. We went into the break 29-22 and kind of let some momentum slip away.”
After the final media timeout of the first half, USU began to battle back and a 3-pointer from senior guard Brockeith Pane spurred an 8-0 run that continued into the second half.
“Coach told us that we needed to get it going and needed to get it cut down below 10 before halftime,” Medlin said. “We had an 8-0 run to end the half, and that was a good momentum going into the second half.”
Medlin said the Aggies wanted to play well for the departing seniors.
“We knew it was the last half in this gym for the seniors,” the sophomore said. “That was one thing Coach mentioned at halftime. We needed to come out with some energy, and we did that.”
After managing 22 points in the first half, USU exploded for 45 points in the second half while holding Idaho to 21 points.
“They dominated us in the second half,” Verlin said. “You’ve got to give them credit. They made some good adjustments at halftime, and they came out and just really physically dominated us in every aspect of the game. We just didn’t get the defensive stops we needed to stay in this basketball game.”
USU held Geiger to six points on the night, while all of Idaho’s other scorers were held in check, as well. The Idaho junior forward and Western Athletic Conference Player of the Week led the Vandals with 13 points, scoring four in of them in the second half.
“We just had a lot of life,” Morrill said. “We were really being positive and sticking together. The last couple of days we’ve been talking about all that kind of stuff. It’s OK to lose, but it’s not OK to lose and stop trying. We’ve got to compete, and we’ve got to stay upbeat. We just got really into it defensively. We were after them, and that was a big part of the second half.”
USU’s 8-0 run to end the first half turned into a 20-5 run and its first lead when Medlin hit his first 3-pointer of the game four minutes into the second half. Medlin hit 27 points in the second half to equal his career high.
“I couldn’t miss,” Medlin said. “The team kept getting me the ball, and they were leaving me open, and I was making them.”
Medlin’s only miss of the second half came on the front end of a one-and-one. USU shot 75 percent overall and 5 of 7 from the 3-point line for 71.4 percent from beyond the arc.
“I knew that I needed to come out and be aggressive and get some shots. We were running plays that were getting me open.”
– ty.d.hus@aggiemail.usu.edu