Ags show true colors in blue/white scrimmage

The Utah State Aggies men’s basketball team went through four 10-minute scrimmages Friday and the final two were open to the public.

Thankfully, the first two weren’t open for the Aggie faithful as the performance wasn’t very positive for Utah State Head Coach Stew Morrill.

“I wouldn’t have slept all night if we had played in the public scrimmages like we did in the two closed ones,” Morrill said. “We were just awful.”

The Ags have been practicing as a team for two weeks now and there are things going well and there are plenty of things to be worked on.

“We’ve definitely progressed,” returning shooting guard Jaycee Carroll said of practice so far. “We now know some plays and we’re really starting to know our strengths and how to play off each other.”

Getting used to all the new players is a big part of the early practices to date. The Aggies return four of their starters but only five players from last year’s NCAA tournament team.

One of the new players who Morrill said had a “good solid scrimmage” was forward Chris Session. In the four scrimmages, Session had 18 points and seven rebounds.

From the four scrimmages, Morrill took away a good idea of where the team stands right now.

“We’re inconsistent in flashes,” Morrill said. “Sometimes we’re looking like we might be able to beat somebody, but that’s part of this time of year I guess.”

The two-sidedness of the scrimmages was a bit of a mystery for Morrill as the difference between good defense and bad offense or vice versa wasn’t always clear. That’s not even to mention the mistakes made by the individual players.

Near the end of the third scrimmage, Carroll was called for a double dribble, but he came back and hit a 3-pointer from the corner in regular season form to open the fourth scrimmage for the blue side. Carroll finished with 29 points and was 5-9 from 3-point range.

The first two closed scrimmages were worse than the two public ones, Morrill said, which is unusual.

In the first two scrimmages combined, the Ags had 12 assists to 22 turnovers – a number which evened out in the last two scrimmages, 19-16.

Part of the problem was the erratic point guard play, Morrill said.

“We’ve got to get Everett Morgan and Mike Daniels and even our veterans David Pak and Chris Huber to be more solid at the point – running the offense and keeping us organized,” he said.

Pak played hard but he has to play smarter and make some more shots which aren’t forced, Morrill said.

Pak led all players in turnovers with eight turnovers. Daniels and Carroll tied for the team lead in assists with five over the four scrimmages.

As for the inside guys, Cass Matheus and Nate Harris return from last year and were one-two in blocks in the scrimmages.

Matheus had three and Harris had two along with Arvydas Vaitiekus. Six of the eight total blocks came in the final two scrimmages.

Both teams shot 48 percent from the field, a stat which the Ags led the nation in last year.

The white squad shot below 30 percent in both early scrimmages but shot 33.3 and 46.7 percent in the two public ones.

The blue squad shot 50 percent or better with a high of 60 percent in the third scrimmage.

“The stats don’t lie, the first two scrimmages were sub-par,” Morrill said.

“We broke even in the two public scrimmages,” he said when asked if the positives and negatives evened out. “It was about 3-to-1 negative in the closed scrimmages.”

The Aggies will open their home schedule with an exhibition game against Occidental College Friday Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. in the Spectrum.

-krn@cc.usu.edu