Shaw powers Aggies past Thunderbirds
After a 12 point, four rebound game Friday against the Trojans, USU center Jarred Shaw felt like he had a chip on his shoulder.
“I felt like I didn’t play like myself in the USC game, but Coach gave me the challenge to bounce back and have a good game,” Shaw said. “I took that challenge and tried to do what I can do.”
Shaw responded in a big way Tuesday, posting 24 points and 10 rebounds to lead the Aggies to a 90-57 win over Southern Utah at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum.
Southern Utah had no answer for the big man inside except to foul, but Shaw punished the Thunderbirds from the free throw line with a 10-of-12 performance from the stripe. Shaw added 14 points on 7-of-9 shooting.
All of the damage came inside as Shaw proved to be too much for Southern Utah’s big men. Shaw scored 13 of his 24 points in the first half and helped the Aggies to a 32-10 scoring edge in the paint.
“I think it was an overall good team win for us against a good SUU team,” Shaw said. “We played fairly well, but we’ve got room for improvement and ways to get better before the next game.
Seniors Spencer Butterfield and TeNale Roland also reached double digits for USU, scoring 11 and 10 points. The Aggies had 11 different players contribute in the scoring column and every player that saw time secured at least one rebound as Utah State won the rebound battle 44-22.
“It’s always good for your basketball team and morale when you get to play everybody who’s available to play,” USU head coach Stew Morrill said. “We had 13 guys available and they all played in the first and second half. That’s a positive things to be garnered from this game.”
USU jumped out to a 5-0 lead behind a 3-pointer from Roland and a pair of free throws from Shaw and never looked back. The Aggies hit their first nine free throw attempts en route to going 29-of-38 from the stripe and finished shooting 58.3 percent from the field.
A free throw from junior Kyle Davis gave USU its biggest lead of the first half at 37-15. Davis — who played his freshman season at SUU — finished with seven points, four rebounds and three blocks in 18 minutes of action against his old squad.
Davis had three of Utah State’s six blocks as the Aggies defense flustered the Thunderbirds all game.
Southern Utah shot just 30.2 percent from the field and 20.0 percent from beyond the arc.
But despite the strong performance on both sides of the ball, Morrill said the Aggies had plenty of room to improve.
“It was kind of an odd game. We were in command the whole way. I didn’t think we played great, but if you look at the stats it looks like we played really well,” Morrill said. “So, we played really well. We had too many sporadic, kind of goofy things. There were stretches of the game that were ugly.”
Utah State hits the road for its next game, a visit to UC Santa Barbara. The Aggies and Gauchos will meet twice this season, the first matchup scheduled for 8 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 16 in Santa Barbara, Calif.
— curtislundstrom@gmail.com
Twitter: @CurtSport07