In each of the last two games, Utah State men’s basketball has walked off the court victorious, one at San Jose State and another against Boise State in the Spectrum. Both were exciting games in their own way and both saw some pretty similar themes. Two that stand out the most are the Aggies’ inability to hit free throws and their opponents inability to miss on 3-pointers.
Starting with the latter, as it dominated discourse for both of the games against the Spartans and Broncos, those two teams made a combined 28 threes against the Aggies last week. It’s quite the outlying week, especially based on the rest of the season. On Jan. 6, USU ranked a solid T-122nd in 3-point defense, allowing teams to shoot 31.6 percent from deep. Seven days later, the Aggies rank 231st in the same category with the allowed percentage rising to 33.8.
Last week was an especially curious outlier based on who pulled off that 3-point shooting. San Jose State and Boise State entered their respective games against Utah State shooting 32.6 and 29.9 percent, or a combined 31.2 percent. They then each went on to make a season-high 14 threes apiece, a combined 28 of 59, or 47.5 percent. For some reference, the pre-USU combined percentage for SJSU and BSU would right now rank a team 299th in 3-point percentage, while the 47.5 percent they combined to shoot against the Aggies would rank first by a margin so wide you’d forget there even was a second place (the next-closest, i.e. the current top-ranked shooting team, shoots 41.5 percent).
“Me and Coach Haut are going to get in here tomorrow and figure out, to be honest with you,” head coach Jerrod Calhoun said after the Boise State game. “There’s some (randomness). It’s basketball. It’s a game of numbers. Sometimes you play the numbers game and they don’t work out.”
As Utah State’s 3-point defense ranking back on Jan. 6 shows, this hasn’t been an issue before now. Were the Aggies elite? Not necessarily. But teams weren’t exactly lighting it up on a consistent basis. Even good teams weren’t cracking the matchup zone assistant coach Eric Haut implemented in Logan, which the numbers very much show.
The Aggies have faced four teams that rank in the top 100 in 3-point percentage, and we’ll loop San Diego State which is 104th in there even though they’re just outside of that group. Those five teams — Iowa, Nevada, Wyoming, North Texas and SDSU — have combined to shoot 37.4 percent this season, but against Utah State, they’re a combined 28.7 percent. That’s a difference between being the 44th ranked shooting team and 343rd. Exclude Wyoming (which did pretty well against USU with a 46.2 percentage) and the shooting rate craters to 24.3 percent.
Why has Utah State’s ability to make teams have one of their worst shooting games of the season gone away? And against some of the worst shooting teams no less? It’s hard to say. Perhaps teams are getting more and more film on the Aggies in their matchup zone and are finding ways to take advantage.
“I think we just have to look over at the film and try and correct that,” wing Dexter Akanno said. “But I think also part of it is late shot clock discipline. We have to stay disciplined in some of those shots. And just the way that we started games as well. Last game, we didn’t do a very good job stopping a couple of their 3-point shots very early in the game. So starting possessions and then finishing possessions, that’s going to be key for us.”
Next up we have the curious dip in free throw shooting Utah State’s gone through. In those same two games against Boise State and San Jose State, the Aggies have made 18 of 38 free throws, or 47.4 percent. Prior this last week, USU ranked 93rd in the nation at 74.6 percent, so it’s another issue that hasn’t been one until just recently.
Except, in reality, it’s not really been a team-wide thing. The troubles lie mostly with the fact that in these last couple of games, a few players that are on less-good end of the free throw shooting spectrum have been accounting for more of the misses. Mason Falslev and Aubin Gateretse accounted for just under half of the total free throws taken by the Aggies and they are responsible for 13 of the 20 missed attempts. And on a season-wide basis, it’s maybe not the greatest thing that the players who shoot the second, third and fourth most free throws on the team (in order, Karson Templin, Falslev and Drake Allen) all shoot worst than 65 percent.
Falslev, unfortunately, ended up as the most visible symbol of the Aggies struggles at the line, despite not really being alone on the team in this regard. He went 1 for 7 at the line against Boise State but that wasn’t a one-off. In the previous game, against San Jose State, he only took on free throw, though it happened to occur with 37 seconds left in a still close game and was the front end of a one-and-one bonus situation. Go back through the last five games and Falslev is just 5 of 21 on his free throws (23.8 percent). These recent struggles have been poor enough for Calhoun to be asked about it on Saturday after the game.
“(Mason) definitely has the yips there’s no doubt about it he’ll tell you that,” Calhoun said. “It’s in his head right now.”
How long it takes for Falslev to overcome his “yips” is uncertain along with his eventual ceiling as a free-throw shooter. He shot 71.0 percent on free throws in high school (63.6 percent across his junior and senior seasons) and made just 64.2 percent as a freshman in 2023-24. This season, thanks to his recent struggles, he’s down to 57.6 percent.
We’ve seen Falslev make big strides in his game. Locals saw it in his high school game, going from an athletic slasher to three-level scorer. In college he’s going through a similar growth pattern, the most drastic change so far being his jump in 3-point percentage where he’s gone from making 30.5 percent of attempts as a freshman to 46.8 percent this year. Heck, even in free throws it appeared as those Falslev was making a jump. Before these last five games, he was making a reliable 76.3 percent. It could just be a matter of more time and, as Calhoun noted on Monday, repetition. He also shared a short anecdote on how much work Falslev is putting in to fixing his struggles at the line.
“I was in (the Spectrum) early (on Sunday), then broke for the ski lesson, came back late,” Calhoun said. “I was in here about 10 or whatever and I had watched two games and I come over to get a drink in our locker room and I hear the ball bouncing and I walk down the tunnel and it’s Mason in there shooting free throws. So it’s certainly, it’s not a lack of effort with this kid, right? He is going to work his tail off to correct it. I think it’s just confidence making a couple, getting that stroke back, and he will.”
What is remarkable about Utah State is that despite these problems, they’re still winning games against good teams. Giving up 28 threes and shooting 47 percent on free throws in a two-game span usually means you lost two games. But perhaps that’s just another layer to the magic that’s kept the program elite despite four different head coaches in five years. It just takes that much more to beat the Aggies.