Photo by Sean Greene
LOGAN — Even Spectrum Magic couldn’t save Utah State from a woeful first half offensive performance, nor keep Nevada from hitting big shot after big shot in the second half. So despite the nearly full arena and waves of orange, yellow and tan-clad students, USU dropped its first home loss of the season, 77-63 to the Wolf Pack.
Not only is it the first time the Aggies have lost at home this season, it’s the first time most of these players have experienced a loss in the Spectrum.
“I hate losing at home,” USU guard Mason Falslev said. “All those people come out to support us and cheer for us, and they don’t — you know, they just — all of us feel bad. They take time out of their day to come support us. We’ve got to play harder for them, so we’ll do that.”
The first half bore a remarkable resemblance to Utah State’s opening against San Diego State last Saturday. The Aggies held an early lead (15-8 tonight, 24-17 against SDSU) but then went ice-cold on offense. Over a roughly six-minute span, USU made just one field goal out of 10 attempts, a cold spell that would last much of the rest of the evening.
Had it just been the offense that went away, that might not have bothered the Aggies too much. After all, they have two victories where they shot even worse than tonight’s 39.3 percent (the Santa Clara and San Francisco games), but the defense started to fall apart. The Wolf Pack, who started the game 4 of 12 from the field, finished the half by making 12 of their next 17 attempts.
Nevada’s offense wasn’t coming from its usual suspects, or at least it’s most usual suspects. Jarod Lucas ended the game with just nine total points and Kenan Blackshear, although the owner of 18 points, needed 17 shots to get that tally. It was Nick Davidson, the third-leading scorer on the year for the Wolf Pack, who led the way. He tallied 25 points on the night, along with 10 rebounds, to put the Aggies on their heels on the defensive end.
“Davidson was terrific tonight,” USU head coach Danny Sprinkle said. “He set the tone you know we couldn’t stop him on the block, we couldn’t stop him from three.”
Naturally, Nevada took a 36-27 halftime lead and the Aggies headed toward the locker room for some much-needed adjustments.
Coming out of the tunnel for the second half, Utah State appeared to have fixed its offensive issues, making 7 of its first 9 shots to start the second. That facilitated something of a rally as the Aggies drew as close as three points, 50-47 at the tail end of that stretch.
And then they promptly went cold again.
And they also weren’t really getting stops during that stretch of great shooting so it limited the impact of shooting 78% to start the half.
Each time the Aggies made anything resembling a push to get back into contention, Nevada managed to get a crucial shot. When USU pulled within three points, 50-47, Nevada went on a quick 4-0 run. After a Mason Falslev layups cut the lead back down to five points, 54-49, AND the Aggies managed a stop, Blackshear ripped the ball out of Isaac Johnson’s hands at the top of the 3-point line and went the distance for a fastbreak layup and on the next Nevada possession Davidson hit a 3-pointer.
The dagger for the game wound up being a 6-0 run that pushed Nevada’s lead back to double digits with under five minutes to play. The Aggies simply didn’t have anything left to throw at the game. It’s shots simply weren’t falling and the defense had no answers. Not to Davidson, and not to Blackshear who scored 12 of his 18 points in the second half.
With it being the second straight game featuring all-too-similar story beats, this type of loss is becoming more than just a one-off road loss to one of the best in the conference. It’s two straight losses, in the same manner, but this time at home and to a team with a worse record than any other previous conference losses.
The common denominator may be fatigue. This far into the season, no one is 100 percent and only a handful of players in the rotation have ever played volume minutes for an entire season.
“Fatigue makes cowards of us all,” Sprinkle said. “When you get tired, that’s when your habits get exposed. And a couple of our guys, they look tired tonight. And it’s probably my fault. I’ve got to see that better and get them out of the game. And the guys we put in the game got to produce when they get in.”
As for the shooting, fatigue may be a factor, but Sprinkle isn’t critical of the shots the Aggies are taking. They just aren’t making them.
“They’re open shots,” Sprinkle said. “We’ve got to make shots. It’s a simple game. That or we need to get guys that can make shots. We’re getting good looks.”
“Sometimes they go in, and sometimes they don’t. But we’ve got to play harder,” Falslev said. People out there, they deserve more from us. And that’s our bad. Our missed shots should be made up from our hard work on both sides of the floor.”
Why exactly a Utah State team that once owned one of the best field goal percentages in the country suddenly can’t hit a shot is a mystery that will need to be solved by Saturday when they welcome Boise State to the Spectrum.
For now, the Aggies must overcome adversity for seemingly the first time this season. This game is the first home loss of the season and also the first losing streak. The team tread new ground by being a remarkable story with its hot start to the season. Now they’re treading new ground with back-to-back bad games.
The good news is that with results around the league, specifically Boise State’s loss at Colorado State, they will be in a four-way tie for first place in the Mountain West at the end of the night, tied with the Broncos along with New Mexico and San Diego State
