Aggie Notebook

So go the posts, so go the Aggies.

At least that was true Saturday night against the Weber State Wildcats.

Early on in the game, USU fell behind as much as seven points. The Wildcats were able to build the lead with good post play from senior Arturas Valeika and sophomore Steve Panos.

Only eight minutes in, the Weber duo was outplaying Aggie big men Stephen DuCharme and Gary Wilkinson, outscoring them 9-5 and winning the rebounding battle 7-2.

After a Utah State timeout at 8:52 in the first half, the USU bigs caught fire. DuCharme and Wilkinson sparked a 15-5 Aggie run that saw Utah State capture its first lead of the game, 30-29, with about 3:30 left in the half.

The two posts went on to score 15 of the Aggies’ last 20 points of the half. Wilkinson lead USU with 13 first-half points. DuCharme ended the half with nine points on perfect 4-of-4 shooting from the field.

Things would be a little different in the second half.

“They shot 60 percent in the second half, and the majority of it was post play,” DuCharme said.

Valeika and Panos were a big part of the Weber State charge in the second half that erased a seven-point Aggie lead and gave the Wildcats a win in their season opener.

Valeika, a 6-foot-9-inch center from Vilnius, Lithuania, ended the game with a double-double, 15 points and 12 boards, on 5-of-7 shooting from the field and 5-of-8 on free throw attempts. Panos added 13 points on 6-of-10 shooting.

USU Head Coach Stew Morrill said the Aggie post defense “is just a sieve right now.”

Coupled with the poor defense, the Aggie big men disappeared in the last part of the second half. Early on, with USU still holding onto a comfortable lead, the offense was running smoothly through the posts.

Although Wilkinson finished with a team-high 21 on the night, he failed to score in the last seven-plus minutes of the game, but he did record two turnovers. DuCharme also only had two points down the stretch. Each team finished with 26 points in the paint.

“With us, the big thing, we hold them to 40 percent, 30 percent, whatever, we beat them outright. Defensively, we just couldn’t do it,” DuCharme said.

FREE THROW DISPARITY

Weber State shot 16 more free throws than USU. In a seven-point win, they had eight more points off of those free throws.

“I’m not allowed to say anything to the media about the officiating, but the only thing I will say is the officiating didn’t cost us the game,” Morrill said. “Weber State kicked our butt, that’s the reality of it. To hide behind officiating, yeah they missed some calls, but we’ve got no business doing that. We just got our rear end kicked, the officials had nothing to do with it.”

Although he didn’t comment on it after the game, he was noticeably upset by several of the calls, most of all by an intentional foul call with less than a minute left in the game that gave Weber State free throws and possession back, icing the game for the Wildcats.

For the first half, it didn’t look like the free throw disparity would hurt the Aggies. Weber State shot only 46.2 percent from the line in the first half.

The second half would be a different story.

Weber State made 11 free throws in a row over a stretch in the second half, and finished the game 25-of-39 for 64.1 percent.

“I thought it was going to cost us the game, but the kids stepped up and made them when we needed to,” Weber State Head Coach Randy Rahe said.

CARROLL’S NIGHT

The Wildcats were able to keep a handle on senior guard Jaycee Carroll Saturday night.

“(Carroll) is an absolute nightmare to prepare for,” Rahe said.

Whatever the preparations were, they seemed to work.

Carroll ended the game with 14 points on three 3-pointers and 5-of-6 shooting from the free-throw line. He only shot 3-of-11 from the field, all of the makes coming from a 3-of-6 performance from beyond the arc.

Carroll and Rahe have a unique connection. Rahe helped bring Carroll to Utah State when he was in Logan.

“I love Jaycee Carroll,” Rahe said. “Other than one game a year, I hope he has nothing but tremendous success.”

THREE GAMES, FOUR DAYS

Utah State got one day of rest, Sunday, before they take the court Monday against Montana Western in a preliminary game of the South Padre Island Invitational.

The Aggies look to rebound from a 1-1 opening weekend at home in the Spectrum.

Even with all the sloppy play, including the 23 turnovers at Weber State Saturday night, Morrill wasn’t going to punish his team with a practice on their only off day in a three-games-in-four-nights stretch.

“That’d be really stupid,” Morrill said of practicing on Sunday. “I’m stupid, I’m mad, but I’m not that stupid or mad. We’ve got three games in four days. If I go in there and just grind them down, that’s not going to do us any good.”

Whether the Aggies are tired or not, USU senior point guard Kris Clark doesn’t see it as an excuse for a lack of energy.

“(The energy) has got to be there, especially coming off a loss,” Clark said. “Tired or not, that’s the mental part of basketball right there.”

Utah State’s jam-packed November schedule, where the Aggies’ longest break between games is only three days, also still looms for a team that Morrill said has a long way to go before they will be a very good basketball team.

But with little practice time in between games, how will they improve?

“We’ve got so many games coming up and so little time to get better, I guess we’re going to have to get better playing games,” Morrill said.

They will have another opportunity at 7:05 Monday night in the Spectrum.

-da.bake@aggiemail.usu.edu