Merrill, Brito bring Aggies back from the brink
Nearly 12 minutes passed between Sam Merrill picking up his fourth foul, then making the three that gave Utah State its first lead since early in the second half.
The Aggie men’s chances of advancing to the semifinals looked slim, with the pressure of heavy foul trouble and countless New Mexico runs mounting. This all came to a head with around nine and a half minutes left, when Keith McGee sank a three to stretch the Lobos’ lead. Kurt Wegscheider then made the lead double-digits for the first time all game. Utah State kept Merrill on the bench with four fouls, sophomore center Neemias Queta in foul trouble and had picked up 11 fouls as a team. Slowly, the Aggies began to fight back and chipped away at the lead.
“Coach just kept telling us, Just stay poised, stay calm,” Merrill said. “We had made some silly turnovers that we always do against New Mexico. They could be full-court press or not and somehow we always do, make silly turnovers. So the mindset was just [to] stay poised, but got to play with a sense of urgency and that’s what we did.”
In a five-point game, Merrill had a plus-minus of 18 to lead the team, demonstrating how much of an impact he had when on the court. Despite having four fouls for a long portion of the second half, Merrill still played 34 minutes and had a team-high 29 points.
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Fellow senior Diogo Brito was also instrumental in the comeback, making a three that broke the 11-point lead and scoring 13 of his 15 points in the second half. From nine minutes on, Utah State found its footing in the game and kept chipping away and Brito led the charge.
“I looked at the floor and I saw that I had to step it up,” Brito said. “I think New Mexico also lost a little bit of the fire that they were feeding off of from their fans. So we just kept our poise, kept playing, kept trying to make plays, simple plays, and eventually we were able to start breaking their press and get our, get it back in the game.”
It’s not as if the Lobos were the dominant team until it all broke down, as this game featured runs by both teams. Within the first nine minutes, Utah State was up 22-9 and Merrill had nine points. Sophomore Brock Miller came off the bench to make his first three-point attempt, junior Abel Porter got on the scoreboard — the Aggies were rolling. Enter — New Mexico guard JaQuan Lyle.
The senior lit it up for 16 points in the first period to help even the score at 33-33 by the halftime break.
“Well, Lyle couldn’t miss. He had that stretch in that first half when we were up, I think 23-9, and then he caught fire and made, what, four out of five,” said USU head coach Craig Smith. “It just felt like a wave. But, listen, when you’re playing and they’re shooting … and we saw it last year with Jackson and I think he had 28 on us here and caught fire and we were fortunate to be able to pretty much relatively neutralize him.”
Photo by: Chantelle McCall
In trying to combat the Lobos potent offense, the team switched up its tactics in a way threw off New Mexico once shots stopped falling.
“You just got to weather that storm,” Smith said. “Certainly we played more zone tonight than probably any time in my nine years as a head coach, but our guys are confident in that and they’re a handful to guard in their man stuff.”
The lead was shortened to six with eight minutes, four with six minutes, two with five minutes, and finally — the Aggies tied the game with four minutes left. Utah State scored on each of its possessions from 5:03 on and Merrill was 6-6 from the free throw line to seal the deal.
With 1:08 left, the Aggies made their way down the court, Brito came off a screen at the top corner of the arc and launched a fall-away three that nearly pushed him out of bounds. The shot? Good.
Utah State took a 73-70 lead into the final minute of the game — and with a miss by Jackson — the Aggies collected the rebound and put the finishing touches on another come-from-behind game against the Lobos. In fact, it is the first time in program history that USU has played the same team three years in a row in a postseason tournament, having to fight through a second half deficit the past two years. The similarities between these two games ended up being far from insignificant.
“Well, if you would have asked me that last year I would have said it doesn’t matter,” Smith said. “It was eery the parallels, except we obviously got off to a bigger lead tonight and it took us longer to get the lead back. But Diogo makes the three in the same corner as he made last year. Last year he made it with just over two minutes to go, tonight he made it with I think just over a minute or just over a minute to go. There’s just so many parallels.”
Utah State will face the winner of Thursday night’s Wyoming – Nevada game in the semifinals, which will tip off at 9:30 MST.