Men’s hoops finds winning form against Nevada
Utah State got itself back in the win column with an 80-70 victory over the Nevada Wolf Pack, a deceptive score considering the Aggies led 64-46 lead with just over five minutes to play in the contest.
Saturday’s win broke a three-game losing streak, the longest of the Craig Smith era and first such skid since Feb. 2018 when the Aggies lost four straight under then-head coach Tim Duryea. Those three losses had USU at seventh place in the Mountain West with a 2-3 record (now 3-3) and made for a “tough week” according to senior guard Sam Merrill.
“We really took what happened on Tuesday night (at Air Force) personal,” Merrill said. “We understood that can’t be who we are.”
Poor shooting played a key factor in Utah State’s struggles over the past two weeks. In the three most recent losses, the Aggies averaged just 37.3 percent shooting overall and 25.7 percent on 3-pointers. Saturday’s game wasn’t completely free of shooting woes, but the 46.3 percentage for field goals on the final box score looked a lot better.
The change in recent trends didn’t take immediately. Though USU started the game with back-to-back makes from three, courtesy of Brock Miller and Justin Bean, the Aggies started the contest 3 of 16 from the field complete with 0 for 6 and 0 for 7 shooting droughts.
But unlike recent games, Utah State responded to in-game inefficiency. From the 11:33 mark in the opening half until just under eight minutes to play until the halftime break, the Aggies made 6 of 7 shots. Spurring a 15-2 mid-half run. Then, in the second half, the team exploded on offense, making 13 of 20 shots. Merrill attributed the advent of quality bucket-getting to one not-so-small part of Aggie Basketball.
“Just sharing the ball,” Merrill said. “We don’t have any selfish guys, but we went though a couple stretches in these last few games where we didn’t move the ball like we needed to. So we worked on that these last couple days.”
USU head coach Craig Smith, too, noted the connectivity of the offense
“I loved how we played,” he said. “We played very, very connected.”
At the end of the night, Utah State had 20 assists — the most by the Aggies in a Division I game since November — led by Merrill’s eight along with four from Abel Porter.
The increased connectivity was most prevalent in how Utah State got Neemias Queta involved in the game. Utah State shook up its offensive formula slightly, featuring the screen and roll with Queta more often. As a result, the 7-foot sophomore, still only a few games removed from a full, unrestricted return to the rotation, put on a show reminiscent of the season that earned him conference Freshman of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year. Queta led the Aggies with 19 points — making 8 of 12 shots to get there — while grabbing seven rebounds.
Queta wasn’t the only one to see more involvement, however. Freshman guard Sean Bairstow played 23 minutes, his highest total outside of games against St. Katherine and Eastern Oregon, and in those minutes saw more time as a ball handler. Multiple times he connected with Queta on those screen and roll actions.
Bairstow’s night wasn’t perfect, as he had a team-high five turnovers, but his eight points, three assists were enough to draw unsolicited, though brief, praise from Smith in his opening comments after the game.
“Sean Bairstow was a great spark for us in a lot of different facets,” Smith said.
Just as much as USU needed to reverse its poor shooting trends, so too was the necessity of crashing the glass. Excluding Utah State’s foray against NAIA side Eastern Oregon, the rebounding average over the past five games, dating back to South Florida, had dropped from just under 40 to just under 29 in the five-game span. In each of those five games Utah State was out-rebounded and by an average of just over nine boards per night. On Saturday, USU grabbed 43 boards to Nevada’s 28.
“It’s been a big emphasis for us,” Smith said of rebounding. “It’s pretty obvious the last four or so games, we’ve had to get back to who we are and what we are, and (rebounding) was a monstrous emphasis in practice the last two days.”
Nevada did make a late push, as aforementioned, the Aggies let an 18-point lead with five minutes to play drop to just 10 points. Jazz Johnson made 6 of his last 7 field goal attempts and had 18 points on the night, but as he began the game 0 for 7 from the floor, the effort proved too-little, too-late. Jalen Harris, the Wolf Pack’s leading scorer had 31 points, but outside of Harris and Johnson, Nevada shot just 8 of 27 for a mere 21 points across seven players.
Utah State will take this small level of momentum into a bye of sorts. The Aggies will not play their normal mid-week conference game next week, having a break until Saturday, Jan. 18 at Boise State.
Twitter: @thejwalk67