Aggies beat UNI, improve to 4-0 at home

The Aggies remain unbeaten at home after a 71-52 victory over Northern Iowa Wednesday night behind 20 points from junior guard Sam Merrill.

They certainly didn’t make it easy on themselves, though.

After jumping out to a 16-8 lead and making seven of their first nine shots, Utah State (6-1) suddenly went into a major slump, following the 7 of 9 hot streak with a freezing cold 1 of 8 stretch, giving UNI (3-4) a chance to cut the Aggies’ lead down to 20-16 late in the first half.

“That first half was not pretty on the offensive end,” said USU head coach Craig Smith. “I’m not sure I helped out guys as much as I needed to but I’m not sure we helped ourselves either.”

The offensive colds spells didn’t stop Utah State from taking an eight-point lead at halftime 31-23, mostly because of the team’s defense. According to Smith, the Aggies “defended (their) tails off” all game but especially in the first half.

Utah State held the Panthers to just 26.5 percent in the opening 20 minutes and 31.0 percent for the entire game. It’s the fourth time USU has held an opponent under 32 percent shooting this year and sixth time they’ve held a team under 38 percent.

“I can’t tell you just how hard that is to do,” Smith said of the Aggies holding teams to low percentage shooting over and over. “It’s hard to do that just defending the three, let alone holding a team to that kind of percentage defensively (on all shots).”

One particular target of the defensive effort was A.J. Green, who came into Wednesday’s game averaging 18.3 points per game on 45.2 percent shooting. The Aggies held the freshman guard to seven points and just 2 of 13 from the field (1 of 7 on 3-pointers).

Utah State carried most of its first-half defense into the final 20 minutes (UNI shot 37.5 in the second half) while picking it up on the offensive end. The Aggies ripped the net over and over on a 56.0 shooting clip. They also cut down on turnovers, giving the ball away just twice in the last 18 minutes of the game.

“If you’re able to not stop the game with those turnovers, you’re able to get into a better rhythm, a better flow,” Merrill said. “So that was big for us.”

USU guard Sam Merrill drives to the basket against Northern Iowa. Merrill scored 20 points on 7 of 14 shooting against the Panthers

Merrill, who had zero turnovers in a season-high 37 minutes of play, led all scorers with his 20 points while adding five rebounds, three assists and a pair of steals.

The star guard wasn’t alone in his scoring efforts, though. Seven Aggies outside of Merrill tallied at least five points with three of them recording at least eight. USU’s bench had 34 points, the third-most this season from the reserves.

“We had people step in off the bench play really well,” said senior forward Quinn Taylor. “Dwayne (Brown Jr.) came in, played well, John Knight (III), Abel (Porter). It’s really good when you can have your bench come in and give you that on the defensive end and offensive end.”

Brown Jr. played just 14 minutes but scored eight points off the bench. Knight III was the second-leading scorer for the Aggies with nine points and Porter played a season-high 16 minutes and tied a career-high with five points.

Utah State is now off to its best start since the 2012 and are 4-0 at home which hasn’t happened since 2010. The next three games USU plays will be away from the Spectrum. First at UC Irvine on Saturday at 8 p.m. The Anteaters beat Saint Mary’s 80-75 Wednesday evening. The Aggies will then face BYU in the Marriott Center on Dec. 5 followed by a visit to Vivint Smart Home Arena to play Weber State for the Beehive Classic on Dec. 8.