Juilon Pearre’s hot hand saves Utah State’s season
Down 20-5 to Colorado State in the first half of their Mountain West tournament opener, Utah State needed somebody — anybody — to save them and keep their season alive.
It wasn’t either of the team’s third-team all-conference selections (Koby McEwen and Sam Merrill). It wasn’t DeAngelo Isby who had two games of 24 or more points this year, or Daron Henson or Diogo Brito who combined for 13 double-figure scoring games.
The man who saved Utah State’s season was one of its two seniors: Julion Pearre.
On the year, the 6-foot guard had just six made 3-pointers. Despite the lack of a shooting touch, Pearre showed no signs of a lack of confidence as he calmly nailed his first four shots from beyond the arc.
“It just felt good when I hit my first one,” Pearre said. “And I kept seeing them go through the rim. It’s easy to hit when you are making them like that so it felt good going down.”
Those four 3-pointers came in the span of less than five minutes, which propelled the Aggies forward in a half that had lacked any momentum for the better part of 15 minutes.
“We had really nothing going, we just didn’t have any movement, any sharpness to what we were doing there to start the game,” Duryea said. “Julion popped open a few times, which is a look they’re going to give us. And he capitalized, kind of moved the chains a couple of times when we didn’t have much going.”
Utah State Men’s basketball teamm plays Colorado state in Mountain West conference on Wednesday March 7th.
Had Utah State lost, it would have been the last game of Pearre’s career. The senior admitted the thought crossed his mind in the first half before he developed the hot hand.
“That thought for sure briefly went through my mind,” Pearre said. “But this is a team game and it wasn’t just me, everybody was able to get involved, Dwayne played really good for us and Koby and when I was feeling it they were able to find me.”
Duryea said the amount of effort opposing teams place on stopping McEwen and Merrill opens up opportunities for guys the defense isn’t paying attention to.
“They lost me a few times in transition and the guys did a good job of finding me,” Pearre said. “I was feeling it.”
The second half did end up being controlled by the usuals for Utah State. McEwen scored 14 of his team-leading 25 points and Merrill had all of his 11 points in the second as well. Pearre took just one shot and only scored on a pair of free throws late in the game, finishing with 14 points and three assists. But the senior was OK taking a back seat.
“I was just going to let the game come to me, I wasn’t going to force anything, take a bad shot,” Pearre said. “Sam and Koby, they were able to get things going in the second half.”