Aggies return to Spectrum to play San Jose State
After notching what head coach Stew Morrill said was “a much-needed win,” the USU men’s basketball team (11-10, 3-3 WAC) looks to defend home court against San Jose State.
San Jose State (0-6, 7-13 WAC) is a team which nearly upset USU in the semifinals of the Western Athletic Conference tournament last season. The Spartans are without Adrian Oliver, the WAC scoring champion last season.
Junior guard James Kinney leads the Spartans with 15.9 points per game, and sophomore guard Keith Shamburger averages 14 points per game.
One Spartan the Aggies will focus on is senior forward Wil Carter, a Pocatello native and former Salt Lake Community College player who was on USU’s recruiting radar at one point, but the Aggies didn’t have a scholarship for him.
“He is really playing well, averaging 11 rebounds a game in league and scoring it against high-caliber competition at the low post,” Morrill said. “He’s bouncy and a guy you would love to have right now. He’s playing really well.”
During the San Jose State’s near upset of USU during the 2010 WAC tournament, the Spartans played a hybrid zone defense that gave the Aggies problems.
“They’ve played it some, they went to it exclusively in our game in the tournament,” Morrill said. “Last weekend they played it a lot. They gave us some problems in the WAC Tournament with it. It’s an effective look for them. They probably feel like they’re undersized and this is a way to try and negate that a little bit, by trying to confuse you and trying to get you to not know what you are doing against a different sort of defense.”
The Spartans tend to go with a four-guard look with Carter as the only post player.
“With him, they’ve got some guys who can get hot from three,” Morrill said. “They made 40 percent of their 3-pointers in the game that I watched the other night. They go small a lot, they will have four guards out there a lot of times. And that effective defense that they play causes you some concern. You have got to figure out how you want to attack that.”
San Jose State dropped a close game to Idaho on Thursday 74-66. Carter scored 15 points and was the only starter to have any impact as the bench did most of the scoring.
“We need to try and come out and be better than we were against Hawaii,” junior forward Kyisean Reed said.
– ty.d.hus@aggiemail.usu.edu