USU hoops lands home-and-home with Saint Mary’s

On Friday morning, NCAA basketball insider for CBS, Jon Rothstein broke the news that Utah State will play Saint Mary’s in a home-and-home series starting this upcoming 2019-20. The first game will take place in Moraga, CA — the home of the Gaels — with the Aggies hosting the well-known mid-major program at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum in 2020-21.

Sources: Saint Mary's and Utah State will begin a home-and-home series next season in Moraga. Return game in Logan in 20-21.

— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) July 12, 2019

Utah State and Saint Mary’s have previously faced off 10 times (USU leads the all-time series 6-4), the most recent coming just last year on Nov. 19, 2018 at the MGM Main Event in Las Vegas. The Aggies pummeled the Gaels 80-63 behind a 24-point, nine rebound and five block performance from Neemias Queta and a 23-point, eight assist outing from Sam Merrill.

Jordan Ford, who led Saint Mary’s in scoring on the season (21.1 points per game) was held to his fourth-lowest scoring output with just 14 on 4-of-15 shooting overall.

The rest of the non-conference schedule has yet to be released. The conference slate was released by the Mountain West on June 6. Those conference games will start Dec. 4 after an undetermined number of non-league games.

Most years, Utah State has tipped off the season with an exhibition game the first week of November and, since joining the MW, have generally played around 14-15 games before starting conference play in late December (last season USU’s first conference game was on Jan. 2. But with the start of league games coming nearly a month sooner than has been typical, it is uncertain how that will impact the non-league schedule for the Aggies.