No. 25 Utah State slips by San Jose State
In its second consecutive road game (albeit with four days of rest in between), Utah State once again struggled to shoot the ball. However, unlike its matchup with Saint Mary’s, the Aggies were able to overcome those deficiencies and come away with a 71-59 win over San Jose State.
Whether it was at the free throw line (11-of-20), beyond the 3-point line (4-of-17) or just any shot in general (28-of-66), Utah State could not find consistency when attempting to score. Fittingly, USU had its second-lowest point total of the season even in the win.
“I thought San Jose State played great. I thought they played an excellent game,” USU head coach Craig Smith said. “They changed some things up with what they were doing, I thought they were effective with that. They changed a lot of their personnel and a little bit of their scheme.”
Leading what offensive charge that remained was sophomore forward Justin Bean. The former walk-on scored the Aggies’ first eight points of the game and scored a game-leading 18 overall on 9-of-15 shooting to go with 14 rebounds. Behind him, Sam Merrill had 14 points with Alphonso Anderson and Diogo Brito joining the double-digit scoring crew with 12 and 10 points respectively.
“It wasn’t the prettiest,” Bean said. “But like coach says any time we get an opportunity to play on the road in conference play, we take advantage of it, we try to execute all our sets, play team ball. I thought we did that at times, but not all the way through like we needed to. But overall I thought we played hard, we competed hard.”
With its offense somewhat on the fritz, Utah State relied quite a bit on dominating the paint on both ends of the court.
Utah State forward Justin Bean drives to the basket against San Jose State center Samuel Japhet-Mathias during the first half of USU’s game Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar)
Though USU missed 38 shots, half of those bricked attempts wound up back in the hands of the Aggies in the form of 16 offensive boards. Unsurprisingly, Bean was at the forefront of that effort with six and Anderson added three of his own.
“We did an excellent job on the offensive glass,” Smith said.
Smith also pointed to USU’s sizable 46-22 advantage in points in the paint as a “big key” on the night. Also keeping the offense from incompetent range were the season-low seven turnovers.
The defensive effort by Utah State took a while to fully boot up, allowing San Jose State to shoot 50 percent from the field and 62.5 percent from three through the first 16 minutes of the game.
“(The Spartans) made some difficult shots, they made three threes right out of the gate,” Smith said.
For the next 24 minutes after that hot start (a span during which USU outscored the Spartans 49-35), SJSU only made 38.7 percent of its shots and only three 3-pointers. The entire second half, in fact, was mostly just San Jose State slowly falling more and more behind as its offense sputtered to a halt and the Aggies casually drawing further and further ahead with its meh, but consistent enough offense.
Wednesday’s win marked the fourth time Utah State has won its conference opener in the Mountain West era (seven seasons). All four of those wins have come against San Jose State (losses to Air Force, Boise State and Nevada).
Next up for USU is the conference home opener against Fresno State. Last time the Bulldogs came to the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum, they dealt Utah State its only home loss of Craig Smith’s tenure.