USU men basketball at Hawaii
For the first time, USU Head Coach Stew Morrill decided to wear a Hawaiian shirt during the game against Hawaii. After Monday night’s game that Hawaii won 69-61, it will probably be the last.
Wearing the shirt to honor long-time Hawaii Head Coach Riley Wallace, who will resign after this season, Morrill shouldn’t be expected to dawn the island clothing when Hawaii comes to Logan to play.
“I told him before the game, ‘The only reason I am wearing this is to honor you and our last competition here, and I may even wear it in Logan, but not if we get our rear end kicked, I probably won’t.’ So I probably won’t bring it out in Logan,” Morrill said in a post-game interview.
For the first 30 minutes of the game, the Aggies avoided getting kicked. Unfortunately, in college basketball, there are 40 minutes in a game.
“They just outplayed us badly the last 10 minutes of the game. That’s how they win the game,” Morrill said.
The first half was dominated by defense, turnovers and relatively sloppy play. Both teams enjoyed five-point leads in the first half before going into the break, knotted up at 25 a piece.
The first eight minutes of the second half were much the same way, a defensive battle with both teams going back and forth. Credit goes to Hawaii’s defense for slowing down Aggie guard Jaycee Carroll. He had a hand in his face all night and was never able to get any easy shots. He finished the game with 13 points on 5-13 shooting.
“They’re long, and they had been working three days on helping when he had the ball and being aware when he had the ball,” Morrill said.
One player who was able to benefit from this and help keep the Aggies in the game was senior forward Chaz Spicer, who scored a team-high 18 points and pulled down 9 rebounds.
“I am just going out and playing. Everyone is playing on Jaycee, and they’re leaving me open a bit,” Spicer said after the game on a radio interview.
With 12 minutes left in the game, the Aggies went on a 6-0 run and had a seven-point lead, looking to be in control of the game. That is when Hawaii guard Matt Gibson had seen enough and decided to take over the game on both ends of the court. In a decisive 16-5 run for Hawaii, Gibson scored 11 points and forced a couple of turnovers.
“He came out and played a pretty good game, but it came down to us making silly mistakes,” Spicer said.
“He a very good player, and he had a great game. We do a pretty good job on some other guys, and he breaks the game open for them,” Morrill said.
Over a period of five minutes, when Hawaii regained the lead and control of the game, several factors happened that led to the Aggies’ demise. Two offensive rebounds for the Warriors led to two 3-pointers. The team also committed turnovers and had breakdowns on the defensive end. For the game, the Aggies committed 14 turnovers.
“It’s frustrating because we were in a position and we fought hard and put ourselves in a position to win. We just break down defensively and turn the ball over for easy buckets,” Morrill said.
There were more than defensive breakdowns that led to the Aggies’ defeat. For the game, USU shot just 35 percent from the field and were blocked 10 times by the much bigger Warriors.
“Our offense struggled tonight as well, credit Hawaii. They’re always physically over here. They always make it hard for ya. We’ve been over here enough times to know its not easy. Its just disappointing that we put ourselves in a position to win. We played really hard and just didn’t execute well enough on either end to give ourselves a chance down the stretch,” Morrill said.