USU runs past BW foe Boise 82-64
Defense wins ball games, the old cliché says. But Saturday night in the Spectrum it was offense that won it for the Utah State basketball team. Head coach Stew Morrill even admitted it.
“Our offense was the key for us, not our defense,” he said.
Behind 59.6 percent shooting, the second-best mark of the year, the Aggies defeated Boise State University, 82-64.
“The score is very deceiving,” Morrill said.
“I don’t think we feel like it’s a double-digit game,” USU center Dimitri Jorssen concurred.
After controlling the first three and a half minutes, running up the score to 12-2, the Aggies fell victim to a BSU 3-pointer barrage the rest of the half, led by Bronco forward Abe Jackson.
Jackson hit three treys in the second half, including one he threw while fading back from well beyond NBA range with two seconds left on the shot clock at the 2:57 mark to make the score 34-30. The Broncos were 6-13 from beyond the arc in the first half.
Jorssen and his teammates were dumbfounded by the Broncos’ 3-point acrobatics.
Morrill was just the opposite.
“I kept thinking they were going to make every one,” Morrill said.
“This is coming off somewhere,” Jorssen said he was thinking when many of the Bronco treys went up in the air, including Jackson’s.
“Wow,” Jorssen said of Jackson’s one-foot leaning three. “What do you do?”
Morrill said his Aggies were getting faked out on many of the Bronco 3-point attempts in the first half.
“We were going like popcorn,” Rock said of the fakes.
BSU took its first advantage, 22-20, with 9:40 remaining and led by as many as five before USU went on a 7-1 tear to end the half after the Jackson three, taking a 37-35 lead at the intermission.
Immediately after the break, the Broncos tied it at 37 on a Delvin Armstrong 8-footer. But from there the Aggie offense kicked into gear and built a 55-44 lead with 11:45 to go after three straight treys, two from Bernard Rock and one from Tony Brown.
Layups and 11-14 free-throw shooting the rest of the way sustained the Aggies to victory.
Rock was USU’s offensive leader in the second half and continued his string of solid performances against the Broncos by scoring16, all them coming after the intermission, in addition to dishing out eight assists. He scored a career-high 24 against the Broncos in the final game of the regular season last year.
Rock’s 3-of-4 showing from 3-point land against BSU was phenomenal, considering he was 16.7 percent from behind the arc going into the game, Brown said.
“Bernard hit some huge threes when the clock was running down,” Brown said.
Morrill said that though Rock’s 3-point percentage isn’t great, he didn’t want to tell the point guard not to shoot the three.
“He’s a kid that will make big shots,” Morrill said. “I’m glad I didn’t tell him not to shoot.”
Tony Brown led the Aggies with 17 points. Jackson led all scorers with 21 and Armstrong wasn’t far behind, adding 20.
Jorssen took advantage of defensive mismatches and pitched in 15, including a driving layup with 6:54 remaining that put USU up 66-55.
Was the play scripted?
“Absolutely not,” Jorssen said.
“I don’t need to see that play for another 10 games,” Morrill said.
With the victory, USU moves to 16-2 on the season, tying the 1970-71 squad for the second-best start in school history.
The Aggies’ Big West Conference winning streak -24 straight so far – won’t be put on the line again until they play at Pacific on Thursday.