Merrill scores 28, Aggies staves off Montana State 81-73

Basketball season is back in full force and for the Aggies. The intensity of the season didn’t wait as No. 17 Utah State escaped a disastrous start to the season by pulling away late to down Montana State 81-73 behind 28 points from senior guard Sam Merrill.

Montana State led 66-64 with 5:25 left in the second half, adding a nerve-wracking wrinkle to the game. Over the next 3:41, however, Utah State went on a 10-0  to take a 74-66 lead and wrestle control of the game for good. Montana State would close the gap to three, 74-71, but Brock Miller stuck a dagger in the Bobcats on a 3-pointer with 29 seconds left and ensuing free throws iced the game.

Sam Merrill (5) dribbles the ball past the defense during Utah State’s men’s basketball game vs Montana State at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum in Logan, UT on Nov 5, 2019. (Amber French/USUSM)

Offensive struggles plagued Utah State from the first minute of the game and never really left. In the first half, USU made 10-of-29 field goals (34.5 percent) and in the last seven minutes of the half, the team went 0-for-8 from the field. They fared little better in the second, shooting 41.7 percent and making just 2-of-7 shots from beyond the arc.

“We didn’t have a great start,” USU head coach Craig Smith said. “We missed some chip shots, just literally point-blank baskets. We played, not necessarily selfishly, but we wanted it easy in the first half, especially. We just weren’t cutting hard, weren’t curling screens, didn’t work hard to get open on offense.”

“I think a lot of what happened tonight was first game of the year, lots of turnovers, missed open shots, missed open layups,” Merrill said. “We’ve just got to know that we can’t take any nights off.”

The saving grace of the offense was an inordinate number of free throw attempts. Utah State went to the line 45 times on the night, led by Sam Merrill’s 18 attempts. USU made 35 of those shots, Merrill tying a school record with 17 makes. Those free throws were huge in multiple ways. In the first half, it helped stabilize the team during that 0-for-8 stretch to end the half.

“That’s one of the best ways to stop a run is to get to the free-throw line. Stop everything, slow them down, get them out of their rhythm,” Merrill said. “The way they were playing defense, with their pressure, we felt like we had opportunities to get to the rim and draw fouls and that’s what we did.”

In the second half, those free throws aided the Aggies in multiple small comebacks late in the game. Alphonso Anderson hit four in a 30-second span to flip the score from 61-58 in MSU’s favor to 62-61 for the Aggies. Anderson made four more shots from the charity stripe during USU’s 10-0 run toward the end.

Anderson’s clutch free throws helped him get to 13 points in his Logan debut. He led all bench scorers in the game while also reeling in six rebounds.

“(Anderson) was huge for us down the stretch, playing on attack,” Smith said. “I thought he did some great things on defensively, some huge rebounds, in particular on the defensive end and then obviously knocking down those free throws.”

Justin Bean, who started at the power forward spot ahead of Anderson, was hardly outdone by his bench counterpart, recording a 13-point, 10-rebound double-double in his first career start as an Aggie. Though both Bean and Anderson are forwards, they played key roles as bigs, even centers, in the second half as Utah State used a small-ball lineup for 11 of the 20 minutes in the second half

For all the noted struggles of Utah State on the night, Smith and his players gave credit to Montana State for their great play on both ends of the court. The Bobcats came into the game with a new coach and had only three returning players that averaged more than eight minutes per game last season.

“They have a good team,” Smith said. “I knew this was going to be a tough game. I’ve been on edge a little bit here the last 10 days or so because it’s difficult. They kind of flipped the script from where we were last year, quite frankly. A new coach, a whole bunch of new players, inexperienced. And when you’re preparing, and we’re pretty detailed in our prep, when you have 10 new players from all over the place and you don’t know what they’re going to run, they had us off-balanced all night, quite frankly.

Most notable among the Bobcats was Harald Frey, the top returner for the team and their leading scorer last season. Frey led all scorers on Tuesday with 34 points. He shot 10-of-20 on the night, making 6-of-10 from 3-point land. Several of those three-balls were from NBA range.

“Frey is a heck of a player and, obviously, went ballistic,” Smith said. “I don’t know how many threes he hit from two or three feet past NBA-range. Those are deep, deep threes. Once you start getting going like that, it’s hard to stop a guy. We were throwing the kitchen sink at him, to not much success.”

Frey’s shot-making kept MSU in the game through the night. Midway through the second, the senior guard re-took the lead from the Aggies three separate times. First on a pair of free throws to make it 59-58, then a 3-pointer (64-62) and then a layup (66-64). All of those came within three minutes of one another.

Outside of Frey, though, Utah State’s defense played well, particularly in the first half. It was the main reason, aside from numerous free throw attempts, that the Aggies held the lead at the break. Montana State shot just 35.5 percent from the field (22.7 when not including Frey’s shots) and was forced into seven turnovers. Kuba Karwowski, in his Aggie debut, made his presence felt as a rim protector. He recorded four first-half blocks, three coming on the same play.

Kuba Karwowski (52) jumps to block the ball during Utah State’s men’s basketball game vs Montana State at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum in Logan, UT on Nov 5, 2019. (Amber French/USUSM)

In those final minutes, the defense clamped down again, forcing seven straight stops in a three-minute span. Frey, the leader of Montana State’s road upset bid, missed his final three shots of the game.

“That’s how you’ve got to win games,” Merrill said of holding MSU, and particularly Frey, on defense. “We had to buckle down and find a way to get some stops. (Frey) missed that wide-open layup but other than that the last few shots he had were tough looks. He hit some deep, deep threes so with a guy like that’s hitting shots like that you’ve got to stay the course and just keep sticking to your assignments and hopefully at some point, the law of averages will even out and that’s kind of what happened at the end.”

For a team that entered the night ranked No. 17 in the AP Top 25 poll and as 21.5-point favorites, it wasn’t the greatest night as attested to by both Smith and Merrill. But being 1-0 was the ultimate goal for game one, especially in front of a raucous Dee Glen Smith Spectrum crowd of 7,331.

“Every game’s a dogfight and it’s not always easy,” Smith said. “But at the end of the day we found a way to win and that’s all that really matters.”

Utah State has now won each of its season openers in the Smith era, having downed Montana State 101-71 last year on the road to start the season. The Aggies’ next outing will be on Friday when they host Weber State in the Spectrum.