Utah State basketball outrun by UNLV Rebels

The Runnin’ Rebels lived up to their name on Tuesday as the Utah State men’s basketball team fell 80-68 to UNLV in front of a raucous Spectrum crowd.

“We talked a lot about live ball turnovers,” said head coach Tim Duryea. “We can’t have them against them. They’re too good at converting when they have numbers and they have space in transition.”

Utah State had 16 turnovers in the game, leading to 20 points off turnovers for the Rebels as they repeatedly converted the mistakes into fast-break opportunities.

“That’s possessions given away,” said senior guard Darius Perkins, who scored six points in the game. “Basically, they scored on every turnover and that gave them a huge lead.”

The Aggies started the second half with turnovers on the first four possessions and added two more a couple of possessions later for good measure. To make matters worse, Utah State experienced another one of the offensive droughts that have plagued the team all season, scoring just two points over the first six and a half minutes of the second period.

In that stretch, USU shot 1 of 7 and had six turnovers as UNLV opened up an 18-point lead on the heels of a 21-2 run.

“The start of the second half was unexplainable,” Duryea said. “Really we did it to ourselves. We did not do a good job passing and catching against their pressure.”

Senior guard Chris Smith ended the streak with a 3-point shot from the corner, then added an easy layup on a blown defensive rotation on the next possession. An off-the-dribble 3 by junior forward Jalen Moore less than a minute later closed the gap to 10.

The hole had been dug too deep, though, as USU was unable to get closer than eight points the rest of the game.

“It’s hard, when you dig yourself in a hole, to get out,” Perkins said. “We’ve just got to avoid that. That’s our biggest issue right now.”

Utah State, needing a win to get above .500 in Mountain West play, battled the visitors neck and neck through the first half. Neither team led by more than four through the opening period as the Aggies were tied or had the lead for more than 11 minutes. A jumpshot by junior guard Shane Rector, who came off the bench to score six points in the final three minutes of the half, gave the Aggies a 36-35 lead at the break.

A made jumper just 41 seconds into the second half gave the visitors the lead for good.

The Rebels started players 6-foot-7 or taller – including 7-foot McDonald’s All-America freshman center Stephen Zimmerman, Jr. — at four of the five positions. The length and athleticism of UNLV caused problems as the Aggies were outscored 46-28 in the paint and made less than half of their shots at the rim.

“It’s always tough when you drive and there’s always three people trying to block your shot,” Smith said. “We’ve scored in there before. We’ve just got to play how we normally do and everything would’ve been fine.”

Just four days after a career-performance in the win over Colorado State, Smith again led the Aggies with 16 points, shooting 5 of 12 from the field and 2 of 4 from deep.

Jalen Moore scored twice in the opening minutes, coming off picks for shots at the rim both times, but struggled to impact the game as a scorer. The Aggies’ leading scorer finished with just nine points on 4 of 13 shooting as UNLV took away his driving lanes and forced him to rely on his jump shot.

“I thought he turned down some good shots to try to get better shots and ended up taking poor shots,” Duryea said. “They did a great job of defending him and attacking him defensively.”

Freshman guard John Middleton made his first appearance for the Aggies, making his only shot attempt in five minutes on the floor. Senior forward Grayson Moore suffered a broken foot against CSU and will miss the rest of the season, forcing the team to burn Middleton’s redshirt.

“We’ve got to do a good job of developing John,” Duryea said. “We just tried to get John’s feet wet tonight.”

The Spectrum saw one of its best turn-outs of the season as the team hosted its first-ever “Black-Out” game. The crowd was invited to wear black clothing to the game as the players wore black uniforms.

The Aggies will next travel to San Diego to take on the Aztecs on Saturday at 4 p.m.

— thomas.sorenson@aggiemail.usu.ed

Twitter: @tomcat340