Aggie men’s basketball team not winning close games
Utah State men’s basketball hasn’t fared well is close games this season. The Aggies lost eight games decided by 10 points or less and USU held leads in the final minutes of seven of those games.
“It is pretty obvious that we are good enough to play in a lot of close games; we are not good enough to win them,” USU head coach Stew Morrill said. “That is something that has happened to us a lot.”
USU suffered another close loss at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum on Saturday, just its third at home, but final score of 80-69 against New Mexico State was not indicative of how close the game really was.
“It was disappointing,” Morrill said. “We hadn’t played great, but we had battled to go a head by one point and from that point on, everything that could’ve gone wrong, went wrong. It’s disappointing because it just keeps happening, with three or four minutes to go we are right there, we are in a position where we can win and we don’t make plays and the other team does.”
New Mexico State used a full-court press and heightened defensive pressure all around to disrupt USU’s offense.
“They turned up the pressure a little bit and we just backed off a little bit,” sophomore forward Danny Berger said. “They really extend the zone and a couple of times we did a good job of seeing the posts in the high post but we didn’t do enough of that. We didn’t attack it enough and we just passed it around the perimeter.”
USU’s struggle to close out the victory against New Mexico State somewhat resembled its first Western Athletic Conference loss against the season against Nevada. USU tied the game at 56-all midway through the first half before turnovers and missed shots began to pile up.
The Aggies never recovered and a 3-point make by Nevada sophomore guard Deonte Burton sealed the game with just under two minutes remaining.
Turnovers and missed free-throws sunk the Aggies against Texas A&M, Corpus-Christi in the overtime loss. USU had a six-point lead against Idaho on the road with just under four minutes to play before turnovers and stagnant offense gave the Vandals the win.
Berger commented on the number of close losses that have plagued USU.
“It’s just execution down the stretch,” Berger said. “The other team does a good job, and we don’t. We just don’t execute down the stretch. We’ve got to get better at it in a hurry.”
Fellow sophomore guard Preston Medlin said he thinks there is still time to improve how USU finishes close games.
“We just need to play better and not turn it over at the end of the game,” he said. “We’ve still got a good amount of the season left, so we’re going to keep playing hard and see how it goes.”
– ty.d.hus@aggiemail.usu.edu