Ags prepping for jackrabbit threat

Matching up against South Dakota State at this point of the season is not a bad thing, Utah State Head Basketball Coach Stew Morrill said Thursday.

“If we hadn’t have scheduled SDSU, we would have had three weeks with only one game,” Morrill said. “In mid-to-late January, that’s not good.”

The game against the Jackrabbits is Friday at 7 p.m. in the Spectrum.

Morrill said this scenario wasn’t caused by bad scheduling on USU’s part, but rather the odd make-up of the Western Athletic Conference.

“What happens when you look at WAC schedules with nine teams, there’s a lot of weird weeks,” Morrill said. “We could have been practicing for two weeks.”

He said SDSU was one of the only available teams at this point in the season.

“Look around. Everyone’s in conference,” Morrill said. “SDSU is in its second year in Division-I. They’re independent so that’s why their able to do this.”

The eighth-year coach acknowledged that USU fans everyone question his scheduling practices.

“There’s not a fan of the Aggies that thinks I do any perfect scheduling,” he said. “There’s always criticism.”

Morrill insists that SDSU is not as bad as they may seem.

“They’re better than some people think they are,” he said. “Just because they just recently went D-I doesn’t mean their a bad team. The first thing that jumped out at me was their win over Central Florida. We lost to them last year.”

The Jackrabbits are led by freshman Matt Caldwell who averages 16.3 points a game.

“Cadwell’s just a real good all-around player,” Morrill said. “He’s versatile. They do a lot of things to give him looks.”

Steve Holdren and Ben Beran also average more than 10 points a game for SDSU.

Morrill said the Jackrabbits will try to quicken the pace of the game.

“They want to play fast,” he said. “It’s the new modern way to play. They do it very effectively. I like their system. It’s like Boise’s.”

Morrill said the players will have to come together to avoid overlooking the D-I Independent team.

“We don’t get better by overlooking somebody,” he said. “We have to improve as a team to beat Hawai’i Monday. You can talk and talk to the players, but ultimately, it’s up to them. When you get close to February, the leaders need to take over.”

The Aggies are coming off a road win over Nevada on Monday. Morrill said it was a big win, but the team can still improve.

“We played hard, we played physical and it was a good road win,” he said. “But we can get better. The coaches always want to perfect the game. That’s never going to happen, but that’s what you strive for.”

Morrill said mistakes are what kept the game against the Wolf Pack close.

“We turned it over too many times at the end of the game, but we made some free throws,” he said. “You always want to fix the things you did wrong, but you have to remember that you did something right if you went to Nevada and won.”

Morrill said Jaycee Carroll needs to find his shooting groove again.

“Don’t need him to get more [shots], we need him to make more,” he said. “We run a lot of things to get Jaycee shots. We don’t need to run more things to give him looks.”

-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu