NOT IN OUR HOUSE
A sign held up by a fan Thursday night said it all: “The Spectrum: a place where opposing teams do not win.”
The No. 9 Nevada Wolf Pack (26-3, 13-2 in WAC play) proved to be the latest victim of what Aggie men’s basketball coach Stew Morrill has called “Spectrum magic.”
It took an extra period of play, but the Aggies pulled off what they weren’t supposed to pull off: a 79-77 victory over a team that boasts the best winning percentage in Division-I basketball and a future NBA first-round draft pick.
And for the third time this season, it was the straight-faced Chaz Spicer who put in the winning basket to lift the Aggies (21-9, 9-6) to victory.
“When I got fouled, I knew I was making two free throws,” said Spicer, who ended the game with 17 points and three rebounds, including a 3-for-3 performance from the free-throw line. “This is what I like to do. When it’s on my shoulders, I’m gonna take control of [the game].”
The events that led up to Spicer’s crowd-pleaser would have made any Aggie fan’s insides churn.
Aggie guard Jaycee Carroll’s lay-up attempt with 1:17 left in the overtime was rejected by Wolf Pack star Nick Fazekas. Aggie fans and coaches cried for a foul call on the Nevada big man, but possession was given to the Wolf Pack.
Aggie forward Durrall Peterson ended up with the ball in a scramble at the other end and threw the ball down court to a wide-open Carroll, who tied the game at 77 with a easy layup with 25.5 seconds to go.
The Aggies managed to get the ball back again after a steal. Morrill called an isolation play for Spicer, who put up a jumper just above the free-throw line. It appeared to be short, but a second later a whistle blew, and Fazekas was tabbed with his fourth foul for making contact with Spicer’s elbow.
“I’m kind of glad they [delayed the foul call],” Spicer quipped. “It took some time off the clock.”
After Spicer drained both his free throws, the Wolf Pack had 3.8 seconds to put up a game-winner, but Marcelus Kemp’s heave from half court was wide left.
It was the second time in school history the Aggies have defeated a team with a No. 9 ranking. The other occasion was in Nov. 18, 1998 when USU took down the intra-state rival Utes of the University of Utah in the Spectrum.
Kemp led all scorers with 25 points and six rebounds. Fazekas was right behind him with 20 and 10.
Aggie big man Stephen DuCharme, who nailed a 3-pointer with 2:48 remaining in the overtime to tie the game, led the Aggies with 20 points, eight rebounds, and three steals.
What were Morrill’s thoughts of DuCharme’s unlikely trey?
“I was thinking ‘thank God’ when it went in,” the ninth-year Aggie coach said.
Carroll tallied 18 points and pulled down a team-high nine rebounds. The Aggies shot 55 percent in the second half.
Early on things weren’t looking promising for the home team.
Though the Aggies got off to a quick start, grabbing a 5-0 lead in the first minute and a half of the first half, the Pack roared back.
The Wolf Pack responded with field goals from Kemp and Fazekas. The Aggies then stretched their lead to 10-4 on a 3-pointer from Spicer.
But from the 14-minute mark, with the score knotted up at 12, the Wolf Pack went on a 14-0 run in the next five minutes.
The Aggies had trouble putting together a comeback for the rest of the half, never coming closer than eight points and trailing by as many as 15.
“One thing I will say about our team this year is that we’ve hung in,” Morrill said. “We’ve hung in when times have got tough. We have 21 wins and we have some limitations, like rebounding. We were tough in the second half. We defended and kept answering the bell when we were down. I couldn’t be more proud of this group. They’ve just hung. I don’t know what else to say. We’ll get back to earth as quick as we can. But this is what you play college basketball for. They need to feel good about this one.”
The Wolf Pack shot 51 percent from the field in the first frame of play, including a 4-for-4 performance from the free-throw line. They also out-rebounded the Aggies, 20-16.
USU was hindered by a 38 percent first-half shooting performance from the field.
Another 3-pointer from Spicer, along with a tip-in from DuCharme with under one minute remaining, got the fans back up to ear-damaging volume, but the Pack still claimed a 42-32 advantage at the break.
As Morrill said, the Aggies hung in. They opened up the second half on a 10-2 run to pull within two points of the Wolf Pack.
The visitors responded with a 3-pointer by Kemp (who had five of them on the night). From then on the game was back-and-forth, with the Wolf Pack jumping to leads as large as seven points.
After Carroll had put in a layup to give the Aggies their first lead of the second half, Nevada Head Coach Mark Fox was given a technical foul with 3:56 remaining for bumping into one official while arguing an offensive foul call against his star Fazekas.
Carroll drained the two technical free throws to give the Aggies a 66-62 advantage, which they never lost for the remainder of regulation.
“We hung and we found a way to win,” Carroll said. “More than anything we finally kind of woke up, we set our jaw, and kind of said we’ve had enough of that.
-sbhislop@cc.usu.edu