Career night from Bassett not enough as Aggies drop fourth-straight game

A career-high 27 points to go along with 10 rebounds from Utah State junior forward Hailey Bassett ultimately fell short Wednesday night in a 64-53 home Aggie loss to Fresno State.

“My goal was to attack more,” Bassett said after the game. “It was a good night, but it would have been better if we had won.”

Besides Bassett, few Utah State players were able to get anything going offensively, and Bassett was the lone Aggie to finish in double-digits in scoring on the game.

“We always have one kid with really good stats and nobody else behind them that even comes close to having a good offensive stat night,” said USU head coach Jerry Finkbeiner.

After a back-and-forth first quarter-and-a-half, Fresno State went on a 12-point run to finish the first half and took a 10-point advantage to the locker room, 38-28.

“We shot ourselves out of the game,” Bassett said.

The Bulldogs increased their lead in the third and buoyed their advantage to 13-points, 50-37, headed into the final period of play.

USU’s shooting struggles were put on full display in the fourth quarter when, while trying to muster a final comeback effort, the Aggies missed three point blank layups in the space of just a couple minutes.

“We couldn’t even make layups,” Finkbeiner said. “It’s just a very, very poor shooting night, and there’s no answers for it.”

Despite this, the Aggies were able to chip away at the lead in the fourth, and with 2:15 remaining in the game, had cut the Bulldog lead to just six points. A few fouls, turnovers and misses later, however, and the game was quickly put out of reach, the final score 64-53.

As a team, USU shot 30.2 percent from the floor and 13.6 percent from three on the night.

With the loss, USU has now dropped both of their games to Fresno State, the other loss coming on the road earlier in the season, 70-59.

“An extremely, highlighted, capital-letters, underlined, bold-font, frustrating home game,” Finkbeiner said.

Utah State is 10-11 overall and 5-5 in conference play, after their four-game skid. The Aggies stay home to play San Diego State on Saturday at 2 p.m., before going on the road to face Wyoming next Wednesday.