USU runs by UC Riverside
Reuben Wadsworth, staff writer
Was it the jet lag?
University of California-Riverside’s weekly basketball release apologized for the Highlanders late arrival in Utah, saying the team was scheduled to travel to Utah on Monday, but couldn’t make it until Tuesday morning.
Without a lot of rest, UCR succumbed to the Utah State defense Tuesday night at the Spectrum, 75-45.
The most exciting thing for Aggie fans all night was when USU head coach Stew Morrill put in seldom-used walk-on forward Jason Napier.
The crowd started chanting his name with about five minutes left in the game and Morrill responded.
“Do they think I’m deaf?” Morrill said. “You’ve got to love that. That kind of support for a walk-on is wonderful.”
Napier responded to the chance to play by hitting a 3-pointer on his first possession in the lineup. It was his first field goal as an Aggie in only his third game in action.
Morrill was glad his bench saw significant playing time.
“It’s good for our bench,” said forward Dion Bailey. “Everybody’s getting the flow.”
Reserve forward Chad Evans scored a career-high five points, while center Jeremy Vague balanced the bench attack with eight.
The Aggies never trailed the Highlanders. Tied at 2-2 early, USU went on an 8-0 run and never looked back, building a 29-16 halftime advantage. The Aggies exploded in the second 20 minutes and were double the Highlanders’ score most of the half, leading by as many as 35 at one point.
USU played especially good defense on UCR’s Mark Miller. Miller scored 24 when the Aggies visited the Highlanders in December but was held to only four points Tuesday.
“Overall, we had them out of sorts,” Morrill said.
“Defense is going to set everything up for us,” said point guard Bernard Rock.
USU held the Highlanders to 28.3 percent shooting from the field while shooting 44.9 themselves. It was the third time this season the Aggies have held an opponent under 30 percent shooting.
Morrill thought the USU offense was out of sorts in the first half. Rock agreed, saying the Aggies suffered some mental errors and were trying too hard at times.
Forwards Curtis Bobb and Bailey led the Aggies, scoring12 points apiece. For the second game in a row, Bobb was 4-of-6 from downtown. He has scored in double figures in nine out of the last 10 games and has led USU in scoring the last three contests. Forward Shawn Daniels added 10 for the Aggies. The Highlanders were led by Aaron Hand who had seven.
At 14-2, Rock is not surprised by his Aggies’ record. Rock said the team is smarter and older this year, and he expected to be better.
“We’ll try not to let it up,” he said.
The Aggies will try to keep their 23-game win streak against conference opponents alive this Saturday when they take on Boise State University.
USU 73, Pacific 59
Senior guard Dion Bailey’s uncontested dunk 10 minutes into the first half of USU’s 73-59 win over the University of the Pacific Saturday night proved to be the spark the Aggies needed to defeat the Tigers.
Until Bailey’s play, USU had been struggling to keep up with Pacific – uncharacteristic of the 14-2 Aggies.
“We didn’t come out and play our first 10 minutes or so,” said forward Curtis Bobb. “Coach [Morrill] told us it was going to be a grind-out game. We just had to come out and play hard and continue to play defense.”
Bailey’s dunk tied the game at 18 and allowed the Aggies to control the ball both offensively and defensively for the remainder of the game. Once USU took a 20-18 lead, the Aggies never fell behind again. Bobb added one final dunk with 1.1 seconds remaining in the game, just for good measure.
The win over Pacific gave USU its best start ever in school history.
“Our defense and our rebounding was the thing that allowed us to win,” said head coach Stew Morrill.
Forward Shawn Daniels recorded a career-high seven blocks. Most of those blocks came against Pacific’s Mike Hahn. Daniels said Hahn leaned into him instead of shooting a fade-away, making him easy to block.
“[Pacific] plays post defense,” Daniels said. “I took it upon myself to try to redeem myself a little bit.”
“Shawn’s blocks were great,” Bobb said. “I’m glad he’s on our team.”
Morrill noted that Pacific was able to shut down guard Tony Brown by “shading” him.
“They had a really good athlete guarding Tony,” Morrill said. “They just did a good job of sticking with him.”
Brown was limited to nine points for the night.
“They screened us and blocked us really hard,” Bobb said. “We didn’t get too many second-opportunity shots.”
Bobb said Pacific used similar boxing and triangle blocking techniques last year, so the team worked on combating that in practice.
“We kind of knew how to handle it when they threw that at us,” he said.
“They’re a funny team,” Bailey said. “They tried to do all types of defense and mind-boggling things.”
Bobb agreed.
“This was probably the most physical ball game we’ve played all year,” he said. “I guess they were trying to get inside our head, but we’re a veteran ball club. We kept our composure.”
The Aggies did keep their composure – for the most part. At the end of the first half, a small confrontation occurred between Brennan Ray and some Pacific team members. While most of the Aggie team had already made its way into the tunnel, Daniels said he joined in to help his teammate.
“I think they were frustrated,” Daniels said.
Three Aggies scored in the double-digits. Bobb, Bernard Rock and Bailey posted 18, 12 and 10 points, respectively.