Aggies get double-dose of revenge on Utes and Huskies
USU vs. U of U
Just about everything seemed to go right for the Utah State Aggies (3-1) to get the win over the University of Utah Utes (3-1).
Junior forward Brady Jardine scored a career-high 20 points on 6-of-7 shooting from the floor and 8-of-10 shooting from the free-throw line, and grabbed a career-high 13 rebounds to lead the Aggies over the Utes, 79-62 Wednesday night.
“That’s as good as Brady Jardine has had as an Aggie,” Aggie head coach Stew Morrill said. “That was really nice to see. He was active. He was active on the boards and confident making shots and making free-throws.”
Jardine said, “I’ve had some missed shots and things in the last couple of games; struggled a little bit and tonight I said forget it. I’m going to go to play. I’m going to have fun. We lost at BYU last week; a tough big in-state loss and to have Utah come tonight with all the talk of them not coming back maybe for a while, we wanted to make sure we sent them out on the right note.”
Jardine’s career performance included four rim-rocking dunks that brought the Aggie faithful to their feet.
“I got sick of missing layups last week, and so I told my team that if I had the chance tonight I was going smash it,” Jardine said. “I give it to my teammates for getting me the ball in easy-to-score places. I had wide open dunks because they got it to me where it was easy.”
The Aggies were able to out-hustle the longer Utes, and stop the Utes from getting into any type of offensive flow. The Utes’ two 7-foot big men, sophomore Jason Washburn and junior David Foster, combined for three points and four rebounds. Junior forward Will Clyburn led the Utes with 16 points in 33 minutes of play.
“We’ll take it,” Morrill said. “We’ll be excited about it. It’s an in-state win by a pretty good margin. We played really hard. Everything wasn’t perfect out there. Everything never is. I’m not going to pick apart the things we didn’t do, because we did enough good things to get a good, solid win. We rebounded the ball. We played really hard defensively.”
The Aggies held the Utes to 37.9 percent shooting from the floor and 21.1 percent from 3-point land. The Utes came out firing in the second half and went on a 12-4 run capped by a lay-up from junior guard Josh Watkins, who would finish with 15 points. The Aggies would respond with an 11-1 run and would lead by double digits most of the remainder of the game.
“We came out flat a little bit, but luckily we bounced back,” Senior forward Tai Wesley said. “We didn’t let them take the lead at all. That’s what we need to do. When teams go on runs, we’ve gotta bounce back and go on a run of our own.”
Morrill said, “We didn’t come out quite as hard defensively in the first half. They made some good plays. We have a lot of good players who have been through a lot. They just hung solid and started making plays.”
Wesley was the perfect complement to Jardine, as he picked up a season-high 21 points on 7-of-13 shooting from the floor and 2-of-2 shooting from the 3-point range. Wesley had only made two 3-pointers his whole career prior to this game.
“I keep saying that I have been working on my game,” Wesley said. “I had to showcase a little bit of the deep range tonight. The first one was in the flow of the game. I caught the ball, I was wide open and it felt good. The second one, I just kinda wanted to shoot it because the shot clock was down. It happened to go down for me. Going 2-for-2 was nice.”
Wesley was also to stay out of foul trouble for the entire game, and didn’t commit his first foul until the 10-minute mark of the second half.
“Starting the game, all I had in my head was: don’t foul, don’t foul,” Wesley said. “I was able to stay out of foul trouble which contributed to playing a lot of minutes tonight. I think it was part of the way the game went. They really didn’t try to pound it inside. They were more penetrate to kick. I really didn’t have to guard a guy one-on-one tonight so that helped.”
Morrill said, “Tai is just playing good every night out. It was nice to keep him out a few more minutes tonight.”
Not everything went right for the Aggies, but Morrill expressed the need for his team to feel good about the win despite all the expectations.
“Our guys need to feel good about it,” Morrill said. “When you are supposed to have a good basketball team you can find yourself analyzing every little thing and what we didn’t do and what we need to do. We just beat the University of Utah by a good margin. We’re gonna feel good about, enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner and get ready for the next one.”
USU vs Northeastern
The Aggies (4-1) were lucky to get a win in the Spectrum against the Northeastern University Huskies (2-2) Saturday night. The Huskies’ senior guard Chaisson Allen scored a game-high 18 points and dished out seven assists in a game that his team should have won, but the Aggies had a few calls roll their way and held on for a 56-54 victory.
“We got lucky tonight,” Aggie junior forward Brady Jardine said. “We gave them every chance they needed to win. We did some things we shouldn’t have done. We didn’t do some things we needed to do. We have a long ways to go as a team. We feel lucky to get out of here tonight with a win at home. I think we did just enough to get out of here.”
Jardine hit two of his team-high 15 points with 1:05 left in the game to give the Aggies a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Jardine finished the night with a double-double, as he grabbed 13 boards to go with his 15 points. Senior forward Tai Wesley added 14 points and junior guard Brockeith Pane chipped in 13 points. They were the only Aggies who had much going on either end of the court.
“Sometimes better lucky than good and we were very, very lucky to win tonight,” Aggie head coach Stew Morrill said. “That’s not a game that I felt we really deserved to win. I thought they out-played us. We just got fortunate. We had just a ton of open looks and didn’t make them. We were primed and ripe and deserved to get beat. We really did. We’ve got a long way to go before we’re a really good basketball team.”
Neither team shot well from the floor, but the Aggies shot extremely poorly from the field, especially from the 3-point line. The Ags shot 38 percent from the field and 16 percent on 3-of-18 from the 3-point line.
“We had a little bit of these shooting woes early last year,” Morrill said. “I’m not overly concerned about that; it’ll come around. We’ve just got to settle in a little bit. You’ve gotta believe you can make shots. A loss of confidence is hard to explain. You’ve gotta believe you can make shots. You’ve gotta know that you’re going to get opportunities. We had a lot of them tonight that we just didn’t make.”
Despite the dismal play from the Aggies, there were some positives from the game.
“This team has been causing 18 turnovers a game,” Morrill said. “We only turned it over five. There are a few positives. Brockeith (Pane) played a lot better. E.J. (Ferris) off the bench was real solid.”
Ferris finished with five points in five minutes of play.
The Aggies trailed a majority of the second half. It wasn’t until Wesley calmly sank two free-throws with just over three minutes remaining in regulation that the Aggies took the lead. A few calls at the end of the game that went the Aggies’ way gave them the advantage.
“It was the kind of game that I felt that we needed,” Wesley said. “We needed to prove ourselves and not have a blow-out, easy win at home. We needed to be tested. We’ll be tested like that on the road. It was a good game for us to pick some experience and learn how we can finish games down the stretch.”
The Aggies now prepare for a tough road trip this week, as they face the Denver Pioneers on Wednesday and the No. 16 Georgetown Hoyas on Saturday.
“We’ve got to practice Monday,” Jardine said. “We have a lot to work on after tonight. We need to have good practices Monday and Tuesday to even have a chance to win at Denver and to win at Georgetown. We need to come together as a team and realize that we need to work harder. We need to work harder on the practice floor and do those little things that will help us win games when we get out here and start playing.”
Wesley said, “Whatever it was we need to fix it and we need to fix it in practice. That’s what we’re going to be looking to do on Monday.”
The game against Denver University is slated for Wednesday at 7:05 p.m in the Magness Arena.
– ty.d.hus@aggiemail.usu.edu
