One down and two to go on the road
Tony Brown’s brother and father were in the audience at the Thunderdome in Santa Barbara, Calif., Thursday night, and Brown responded — despite being a bit under the weather.
Brown led Utah State to a 71-48 victory over the University of California at Santa Barbaara with a 16-point performance, including hitting 4-of-8 from the 3-point line and a total 6-for-11 from the floor.
“He can get the flu everyday if he’s going to play like this,” said USU head coach Stew Morrill.
In addition to his stellar play, Brown reached a milestone during the game. With a trey early in the second half, Brown became the third all-time Aggie 3-point shooter.
Despite winning by 23 points, the Aggies didn’t always lead by such a great margin. UCSB was up 6-3 early. The Aggies battled back to tie it at 15, then went on a 19-4 run to make it 34-19 after two Curtis Bobb 3-pointers. USU held on for a 36-21 halftime lead.
In the second half, the Gauchos closed the USU lead to 9 points at 41-32 with 16:35 to go. The Aggies came back to make it a 20-point lead at 54-34, with 11:19 left and never looked back.
“This is a real fun win for us,” Morrill said. “We had a lot of things go well. We played well for 40 minutes.”
One of those things that went well was the defense. USU held UCSB to 36.6 percent shooting.
“Our guys were setting awesome screens,” Brown said.
Morrill was pleased that his players weren’t taking “silly” shots.
“Every guy was making the extra pass to get a better shot,” Morrill said.
Rock was especially unselfish moving the ball, Morrill said. Rock dished out 10 assists.
Brown said some of the credit for the win goes to reserve forward Dion Bailey for his offensive rebounds. Bailey also wasn’t too shabby in the scoring department. He chipped in 12 points, which tied his all-time high. Curtis Bobb and Dimitri Jorssen had nine points apiece, while Shawn Daniels netted eight. Mike Vukovick was the only double-figure scorer for the Gauchos with 10.
USU plays next at Long Beach State University Saturday at 6:05 p.m. Brown said the team needs to go into that game with as much emotion as it did against UCSB.