Aggies take CSU to the wire, fall short in MW bout
FORT COLLINS – Utah State basketball drops to 10-6 on the season and 1-2 in conference play after a nail-biting 77-72 loss to Colorado State Wednesday night. The Aggies struggled to contain Ram stars David Roddy and Isaiah Stevens, as the duo scored 24 and 22 points respectively.
Junior guard Sean Bairstow led the Aggies with a career-high 20 points and five rebounds while leading the team in minutes played. With senior Brock Miller sidelined dealing with a back injury, Bairstow has now made two consecutive starts in his place and contributed significantly.
He became the sixth Aggie this season to put up 20 points.
Senior Brandon Horvath had a solid outing as well, adding 15 points and a team-high seven rebounds and four assists. Forward Justin Bean had 14 points and six rebounds as well before fouling out with 1:04 remaining in the game.
The Aggies jumped out to an early 10-5 lead thanks to a nearly six-minute scoring drought from the Rams. A series of three-pointers from the sharpshooting Rams quickly erased the deficit and Colorado State took back the lead.
The teams entered the locker room with Colorado State leading 33-24, after a first-half categorized by long Aggie scoring droughts and numerous Ram’s threes.
Despite trailing by as many as ten points in the second half, the Aggies clawed back into the game and snatched a two-point lead when Bean hit jumper with 4:37 remaining.
A short 28 seconds later, Colorado State’s 10th 3-pointer of the game – courtesy of Roddy – took back the lead for good.
“Really proud of the team and how we fought back in the second half,” said Bairstow postgame. “We stuck together, I think we made some timely plays and we just needed to make a couple more.”
Utah State’s three-point woes continued in Fort Collins as they hit just four threes and allowed the opposing Rams to shoot 37% for 30 points from beyond the arc. After starting the season shooting an impressive 37.5% from deep, the Aggies have shot 28% from three in their last five games, including a brutal 1-of-19 performance against the Air Force Falcons.
In addition to recent struggles, the Aggies have shot over 41% from three in their ten wins this season and just over 24% in their six losses.
Utah State is third nationally in assists per game at 19.1 but was only able to dish out ten assists tonight.
Colorado State switched between man and zone defense several times throughout the game to keep the Aggies off guard and get into passing lanes.
“Their zone [defense] was a factor,” said head coach Ryan Odom after the loss. “I thought they did a nice job of that, switching to the zone.”
Utah State will come home and prepare for Saturday’s game against a Wyoming team that has seen three straight postponements due to COVID-19 and has not played a game since December 25.