Aggie men sweep Falcons, earn first-ever 4-0 start to MW play
Utah State men’s basketball completed its second conference sweep of the season, downing Air Force 72-53 Saturday night, following a 35-point victory on New Year’s Eve earlier in the week.
The win sends USU to 4-0 on the season in conference play (7-3 overall), the first time the Aggies have started league play with four straight wins since joining the Mountain West. The program’s last 4-0 conference start came in 2012-13, Utah State’s final season as a member of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC).
Utah State started both halves with dominant runs. In the first, the Aggies shut out the Falcons for nearly seven minutes with AFA getting their first bucket, a 3-pointer, at the 13:18 mark of the opening half. That triple put an end to what was a 14-0 run by USU to start the game.
However, the Aggies didn’t dominate the rest of the first half in the way one would expect with that kind of start. Air Force outscored USU 20-19 over the final 13 minutes of the half and USU head coach Craig Smith made sure his team was well aware of their poor late first-half play in the locker room.
“We told our guys at halftime: ‘We’re taking out of rhythm shots, we’re playing selfish basketball, we’re not playing for each other,'” Smith said.
In the postgame press conference, Smith specifically pointed out USU’s assist-to-turnover ratio at the half: eight turnovers to just five assists. He said he felt the team “played disconnected on the offensive end” and that “we didn’t defend with nearly the aggression” as early on.
The players took that halftime talk to heart and began the second half much in the way they started the first — an 18-6 run that took the 33-20 halftime score and ballooned the lead to 51-26. That 25-point margin would be the largest the Aggies held at any point in the game (matched only by a 53-28 margin not too long after).
“The start of the second half was much like the start of the second half the other night,” Smith said. “I though we played really connected — I bet we had more assists in the first five minutes of the second half than we did the whole first half. But we really started sharing it.”
Playing through star center Neemias Queta turned out to be a key for Utah State and was something Smith felt his team didn’t do nearly enough of in the first half. But tossing the ball in to Queta in the post isn’t just about giving him post-up opportunities. The 7-foot junior took just 10 field goal attempts on the day for a modest 15 points. Queta also facilitated well from the block with a team-leading six assists in the game, and his now 3.6 assists per game leads Utah State on the season.
“(Queta)’s always been a great passer,” Smith said. “He has great vision, but not just the vision, it’s the selflessness that goes with it, you’ve got to have both and he’s able to deliver those thing on time and on target and when you have a big guy that can do that you can do great things on the offensive end.”
In all, the native of Portugal led Utah State outright in rebounds (11), assists (6) and blocks (4) while being tied with Justin Bean for the team lead in both points at 15 and steals with two.
Other notable performances from the Aggies included Brock Miller with 13 points. Bean had seven rebounds and two assists to go with his aforementioned 15 points and two steals. Marco Anthony didn’t get in on much of the scoring, but was efficient from the field, going 4 of 6 overall for nine points and filling the rest of the stat sheet by grabbing seven rebounds, dishing out four assists and blocking two shots. Rollie Worster finished with 13 points on 5-9 shooting, with the freshman grabbing eight by halftime and finding his shooting form that had been missing in previous games.
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