Aggies re-kindle offense behind Worster’s 19 points
Needing to avoid a series sweep at just about all costs, Utah State responded with a decisive 83-74 victory over the Running Rebels, avenging its Monday loss to UNLV and ending a two-game losing skid.
Freshman guard Rollie Worster scored a team-high 19 and nearly completed the first Aggie triple-double since 1988 by adding nine rebounds and nine assists.
“I told our staff in the locker room, I said ‘Man, Rollie had a heck of a game,'” USU head coach Craig Smith said after the game. “I had no idea he had 19, nine and nine. And those numbers speak for themselves.”
Utah State's Rollie Worster is one of the best freshmen in the country that nobody really knows about. Went for 19, 9, and 9 last night versus UNLV. Remember the name.
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) January 28, 2021
Worster had three steals to go with the near-triple-double effort and had just one turnover (he averaged 3.6 in the previous eight games). He’s the only player in the NCAA this season to record 19 points, nine rebounds, nine assists and three steals in a single game and one of just nine players since 2010 to record that stat line while turning the ball over no more than one time.
“All my teammates were giving me crap (about not quite getting a triple-double),” Worster said. “It is what it is, I don’t stat-watch or anything like that, obviously it would have been cool, but just happy we came up with the win tonight.”
By his own words, the win will go down better than the stat line, but a much better performance could help the confidence of the freshman. Since Jan. 3, Worster had scored in double figures just one time in seven tries, this following his early-season scoring run where he averaged 11.2 points and had 10-plus points seven out of 10 games. Worster attributed this bounce-back effort to being “relaxed in play.”
“I didn’t overthink things,” Worster said. “I just went and played my game, got teammates involved. Just went and played.”
UNLV were able to get out to an early lead, holding a 19-13 advantage at the 10:15 mark in the first half but a 10-3 run by Utah State erased that deficit over the next three minutes and change. Four different Aggies scored in that lead-flipping run, displaying the balanced offensive attack that saw five USU players score at least 12 points.
Behind Worster’s team-leading 19, Brock Miller had 15 points including a 3 of 5 shooting mark from three. Neemias Queta and Justin Bean had 13 points a piece and Marco Anthony scored 12. Anthony set a career-high for 3-pointers made in a game, going 3 of 4 from deep on the night.
The Rebels didn’t lie down after losing their six-point lead. They traded leads with Utah State late in the first half with the Aggies claiming a light 37-34 halftime lead. In the second half, USU used a 9-0 run that kept UNLV chasing the rest of the game. The lead would peak at 75-61, and though UNLV chipped that down to nine points thanks to USU relaxing late in the game (something Smith wasn’t happy about post-game), the Rebels were never truly in the game for most of the second half.
Smith didn’t rely on his bench unit nearly as much as in previous games. Five of USU’s starters played 30-plus minutes with Miller and Worster each playing 38. Backup guard Steven Ashworth, who’s been a standout player among the reserves, played just five minutes. Alphonso Anderson, USU’s most impactful bench player on both ends, saw just 12 minutes of court time. It called back to the last time USU was coming off back-to-back losses back at the beginning of the season. After losing to both VCU and South Dakota State, Smith played all the starters heavy minutes which aided the Aggies in an 82-71 win over Northern Iowa.
Utah State is in sole possession of second place in the Mountain West standings after the win with a 10-2 conference record. Colorado State is 0.5 games out of a tie with a 9-2 record of its own and another game with Boise State upcoming. The Rams crushed the Broncos in the first meeting 78-56 in Fort Collins. The Aggies won’t play again until Thursday, Feb. 4 when they’ll travel to Fresno State to face the eighth-place Bulldogs.
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