Aggies lock down Lobos for seventh straight win, fifth straight in MW play
The USU men’s basketball team continues its dominant roll through its early Mountain West Conference schedule. Its latest victim, the New Mexico Lobos, were downed 77-45 by the Aggies in Lubbock, Texas.
Wednesday’s game was played in Texas due to the Lobos being forced out of their home in Albuquerque due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Utah State’s defense in the early goings of the game would have made New Mexico feel unwelcome even if the contest were held at The Pit back in New Mexico. The Lobos missed each of their first nine shot attempts and hardly got better by the end of the game, shooting just 15 of 56 for the night. The Aggies also forced the nominal home team into 13 turnovers in the opening 20 minutes alone, 17 overall for the game.
Aggie head coach Craig Smith said the team keyed in on one of New Mexico’s most glaring offensive trends: just over 74 percent of the Lobos’ shots prior to Wednesday came inside the arc.
“We felt like we had to do a really good job of just keeping a body between the ball and the rim,” Smith said.
One nuance to their defense Smith added was turnovers, not necessarily forcing them (though USU did that well Wednesday too), but in not committing them.
“We had to first of all make sure we didn’t turn it over,” Smith said. “We didn’t want our offense to be their best offense.”
Last year, in Utah State’s loss to New Mexico in the regular season finale the Aggies committed 17 turnovers — the second-highest single-game total for the entire season (tied with the game against South Florida) — which the Lobos turned into 25 points. In recent years, the Aggies have usually struggled against UNM’s full-court press and half-court trap defense and it was something the team focused on in practice and in the film room, including a look back to a previous opponent from this season.
“One thing we did is we looked back at our VCU game earlier in the year because they ran a similar run-and-jump,” USU forward Alphonso Anderson said, “and we found where we were leaving each other alone on islands and stuff. When you have traps like that you’ve got to work together and be there for your teammates. So we worked a lot on that this week, just coming back to the ball and helping each other out.”
The hard work paid off on Wednesday as USU had just three first-half turnovers. A short but sloppy stint in the second inflated the final Utah State turnover count to 13, but the Lobos only got 13 points total out of those giveaways.
Though the Aggies dominated defensively with a lockdown that would make COVID-19 itself shudder, USU found itself trailing 11-6 after a Keith McGee 3-pointer at the 12:45 mark had the Lobos on an 11-2 run. To cut this run short and start what would eventually become a soul-destroying 35-7 run to end the half up 41-18, Utah State turned not to its usual suspects on offense, but to its bench players.
After the 3-pointer that gave UNM the largest lead it would hold for the night, the next nine points were scored exclusively by players who came off the Aggie bench. Sean Bairstow got the run started with a pair of free throws, Anderson tied the game up at 11 with a 3-pointer and then gave USU a 13-12 lead with a layup. Trevin Dorius and Steven Ashworth got in on the scoring too throughout the rest of the first half.
“This was the best performance by our bench collectively,” Smith said. “I though Alphonso Anderson had a great game, I thought Sean Bairstow played really well. I thought Steven Ashworth gave us great pace. And Dorius didn’t play as much as maybe normal because Queta I thought was so good, but his minutes I thought were really good as well.”
Anderson’s performance stood out, especially in light of his struggles this season. He hasn’t played nearly as many minutes as last year with Justin Bean and Neemias Queta now both healthy and starring in the front court. After averaging 8.1 points a year ago coming off the bench and had 12 double-digit scoring outings, Anderson had yet to reach double figures this season in scoring. His 14 on Wednesday ended that run and was his highest scoring total in over a year.
The 14 from Anderson was third on the team behind Queta’s game-high 18 on 9 of 10 shooting. Marco Anthony followed close behind with 15 points with the transfer guard tying for the team lead in rebounds (six, tied with Rollie Worster) and assists (three, tied with Justin Bean).
Utah State has now won seven games in a row, five of those being conference games. The Aggies will face New Mexico in the second leg of the two-game series on Friday at 7 p.m.