Streak snapped: Aggies lose at SDSU despite Merrill’s 35
“Most nights, we eliminate losing. We really didn’t eliminate losing tonight.”
Those words, coming from the mouth of Utah State’s first-year head coach, Craig Smith, were probably the best way to sugar-coat his team’s 68-63 road loss to San Diego State on Saturday that ended the Aggies’ seven-game winning streak.
Sam Merrill had himself a spectacular scoring night, netting for 35 on 50 percent shooting overall and from deep. Outside of the 6-foot-5 junior, however, USU shot an abysmal 32 percent overall and 33 percent from 3-point range. The team’s second-leading scorer, Abel Porter, finished with eight points.
USU head coach Craig Smith said the zone defense the Aztecs employed at the start of the game “got us disjointed,” changing the Aggies from a team-oriented passing offense to one that had 12 turnovers and four assists at halftime while relying on one player for most of its points.
“To beat a team of this quality, whether it’s San Diego State or Fresno State, or go right down the line, we can’t play one-on-one basketball,” Smith said. “We have to have ball reversals, we have to move it and we were just really sticky with (the ball).”
For all of the scoring heroics from Merrill, there was just as much non-scoring by the Aggies to the tune of three separate streaks of four-plus minutes where the team didn’t make a single field goal. Put end to end, those droughts spanned a more than 15 minutes of game time.
The deadliest of those dry spells came in the first half just before the 10-minute mark and lasted over five minutes. Utah State went completely scoreless on 0 of 6 shooting with three turnovers to boot. Making matters worse, San Diego State took that time to go on a scoring rampage. When the dust settled, the Aztecs had gone on a devastating 23-0 run, turning a USU 18-8 lead into a 31-18 SDSU advantage.
Merril brought the team back from the brink, scoring all of USU’s points in a 12-2 run to end the half, but the damage was done. The Aztecs had a 33-29 halftime lead plus momentum and the Aggies never took the lead again, only tying the game 40-40.
The last push from the men in blue culminated in a Diogo Brito 3-pointer that drew them within one point 53-52. But the Aggies then gave up an 8-0 that effectively ended their chances of a win.
“They beat us in the things that we normally do well in.” Merrill said. “Got to give them a lot of credit. We battled and found a way to keep it close after that big run they had. We couldn’t find a way to get over the hump.”
For just the second time this season, the Aggies were out-rebounded by their opponent (last time was the team’s 60-50 loss to Houston). SDSU had 38 rebounds to USU’s 35 including 14 offensive boards (leading to 15 second chance points), the most given up by the Aggies all season in a single game.
Utah State had as much of a chance to win as it did because it forced San Diego State to shoot almost as poorly as the Aggies. Worse, actually. USU shot 39 percent as a team compared to 37 by the Aztecs with a 41-33 advantage on 3-point percentage. It’s the 15th time the Aggies have held a team to under 40 percent shooting this season.
The loss sets Utah State back into a tie once again with Fresno State with seven conference games remaining.