Aggies beat Lobos, reclaim second place in MWC standings
A second half defensive lockdown propeled Utah State men’s basketball past some early shooting woes to take down New Mexico 71-55 at home Wednesday night.
With the amount of intensity New Mexico started the game off with, you’d think that the team really took its buzzer-beater loss at home to Utah State to heart. Almost seemingly everything Utah State was doing early on was being countered by the Lobos, and New Mexico was the only of the two teams that was in good shooting form from the jump. With six points in the first five minutes, New Mexico senior guard Anthony Mathis was able to lift his team to a 12-5 lead.
The one constant from Utah State throughout the first half was freshman center Neemias Queta, who had all five of those Aggie points early in the game, as well as 15 by the halfway mark. Although Queta was able to contribute offensively immediately, the Lobos were doing a good job on the offensive end getting points in the paint, an unusual occurrence in a game featuring Utah State. Add on top of that Utah State was shooting just 34 percent from the field in the first half and wasn’t significantly out rebounding its opponent, and you have a recipe for a close game.
A three from junior guard Sam Merrill made the difference late in the half and Utah State was able to earn a 35-32 lead at the break.
“I thought we were tentative, so to speak, at the rim,” USU head coach Craig Smith said. “Then not finishing very strong on the offensive end. We were getting stops early, but then they’d go on a run. I just thought we weren’t playing as hard as we needed to be playing.”
Junior guard Diogo Brito was one of the standouts of the bench for the Aggies. He too thought the team under-performed in the half.
“I thought we started really slow,” he said. “We didn’t know what to do against their match-ups and we weren’t moving the ball very well. In the first half, we missed a lot of easy shots – a lot of open threes and a lot of layups – and that kept us close to them.”
But, it was players like Brito and redshirt freshman Justin Bean that propelled the Aggies in the second half to take a commanding lead and keep New Mexico at a comfortable distance. The team as a whole really turned on the defensive intensity, leading to 10 steals by the Aggies, which helped make it difficult for the Lobos to ever truly get into a rhythm. When shooting seemed to be an issue early on, Coach Smith turned to his bench to provide the change the game needed in order for them to pull out a win.
“Our bench was really, really good,” he said. “Justin Bean had the best game of his career, gets eight points, five rebounds, but it was more than that with his energy and tenaciousness. It felt like he was everywhere.”
Bean played a season high 21 minutes, 15 of them coming in the second half, and had the highest plus/minus on the team. Second best was his bench mate Brito.
“Diogo has been playing very good basketball as of late, on both sides of the ball,” Smith said. “He was everywhere, tipping and deflecting. He’s been such a consistent performer and keeps getting better.”
Queta ended up being the Aggies’ leading scorer on the night for just the fourth time this season, finishing the night with 23 points and grabbing his sixth double-double in seven games with 10 rebounds. Queta was his usual self, hyping up the crowd after a timeout, flexing after a big defensive stop, doing whatever he could to keep the energy up. But it was the whole team who took on this attitude in the second half, eventually leading to the win.
“The energy was just there, especially in the second half,” Bean said. “We made a really good run in those last 10 minutes and it was electrifying. The fans really showed up tonight, props to them. The HURD was amazing. You can just tell right from the get-go when the fans started coming in that they were ready to support us and get things going.”
With the win on Wednesday night, and a loss from Fresno State, Utah State reclaims second in the Mountain West standings with just five games left to play. Next up, the team’s lone matchup with Boise State this season, a Saturday afternoon road-trip for the Aggies.