More cold shooting, a high altitude road venue and a relentless opponent made it a tough night for Utah State in its road game against Wyoming on Tuesday evening. Despite all those challenges, the Aggies pulled off the win 71-67, an almost identical score to USU’s win in Logan exactly two months ago.
“We found a way to get to the free throw line and win ugly on the road, which is really hard to do. So give our guys a lot of credit,” USU head coach Jerrod Calhoun said.
Winning ugly just seems to be a theme for Utah State in many of these conference games. The Aggies have now claimed six of their 10 conference wins by margins of six points or less.
How this game got to be so ugly was due mostly to the fact that Utah State simply had another really poor shooting night. Right after going 5 of 31 from three against New Mexico, the Aggies actually shot a worse percentage by going 3 for 19 (16.1 percent to 15.8 percent) against Wyoming. It’s a wild swing from a seemingly distant five-game stretch preceding these last two outings where the Aggies were shooting in the mid-40s from three.
As Calhoun mentioned, though, free throws came to save the day. Tuesday proved to be one of the best free throw shooting days of the season for his team. The Aggies made 24 of 31 attempts at the line, the second-most made free throws in a game this season for them. It’s also the first time Utah State has shot better than 62 percent on free throws since Jan. 4 (on games where they attempted at least 15 free throws, which excludes one game where USU went 8/9).
The drastic increase in performance at the line was quite the relief and perhaps a confidence-builder for the team after a very rough stretch of free throw shooting in January.
“I hope we can build on this,” Calhoun said. “Those big pressure moments, you can’t practice them in practice in front of an empty arena. The only way you get those are in live competition. I was so happy (Mason) Falslev got up there and knocked them down. Obviously, Ian was tremendous at the free throw line.”
Falslev, who had shot just 33.3 percent on free throws in his last 10 games, went 2-for-2 on a trip to the line with 37 seconds left that extended USU’s lead to six points.
Getting so many free throws was no accident. The number was padded by a rush of take fouls late in the game, but USU went to the line 21 times before the final 40 seconds brought about a free-throw fest. Ian Martinez, who scored a game-high 19 points, earned nearly half of his points at the charity stripe by going a perfect 9 for 9.
“We’re just trying to be more aggressive and also take advantage of other teams being aggressive,” Martinez said. “We did a great job just getting a lot of foul calls. And we got to the line late and I stepped up, made some free throws. Some other guys did make a lot of free throws as well. So we did a good job in that area.”
Free throws ended up constituting the final seven points scored by the Aggies, and they dang near needed every last one of them because of the never-say-die effort from Wyoming. The Cowboys were missing their top scorer, Obi Agbim (17.8 points per game), who missed the game due to being in concussion protocol, but didn’t look act like a team without its offensive engine with the effort they put into this game.
That effort first came up seven minutes into the game. Utah State built a 15-8 lead and looked to be taking over after back-to-back 3-pointers from Drake Allen and a layup from Karson Templin. But, the Cowboys rallied with a 7-0 run to erase the control the Aggies had on the game. In fact, over the final 11 minutes of the first half, Wyoming ended up outscoring Utah State by 12 points (27-15). The Aggies committed eight first-half turnovers — something Calhoun pointed out multiple times in his post-game comments, saying his team was “careless” — and shot 39.3 percent from the field.
The eight-point underdog Cowboys went into halftime as the better performing team. So Calhoun had to make adjustments and find a way to motivate his team during the mid-way break.
“I just said we should all be very honored to put the Utah State jersey on,” Calhoun said. “And then also the name on the back of the jersey really means something. And I thought we were very careless in the first half and I didn’t think we had enough urgency. And I made them well aware of my feelings.”
One of the strategic adjustments included playing more man-to-man defense, a switch Calhoun has gone to several times throughout the season. According to the first-year coach, it “was really good for us” and the numbers very much back up the sentiment. Wyoming went from shooting just under 59 percent from the field to under 35 percent in the second half.
In the most crucial defensive stretch of the game — roughly five minutes between the six-minute mark and the final 70 seconds of the game — Utah State held Wyoming to zero field goals. 0 for 6. In those same five minutes, the Aggies took a one-point game (56-55) and turned it into an eight-point margin.
But back to those final seven made free throws for the Aggies, a couple of those nearly iced the game with 24 seconds to go. For the first half of that final minute, the two sides had been shifting the lead from six points to four with several trips to the free throw line. And although both teams were out of timeouts, the game seemed destined to be extended another 10 minutes on the back of take fouls. Except when Wyoming guard AJ Wills threw a bad pass that went out of reach of Kobe Newton, the Aggies were handed the chance to go up eight points, 70-62 and Martinez converted on exactly that chance.
The game seemed all but over with that advantage and so little time. And yet, the Cowboys persisted, much to their credit and nearly to a surprise rally in the closing moments. A _ 3-pointer with 17 seconds left followed by a pair of missed free throws by Karson Templin (the lone 0-for-2 trip to the line all night for any Aggie) meant Wyoming had the ball down just five points and 14 seconds on the clock.
Luckily for the Aggies, it took 13 of those seconds for Wyoming to get what became its final basket of the game, a tip-in layup from Cole Henry. An Allen made free throw with one second left truly iced the game by making it a four-point margin, but also ruined the chance at a duplicate score from the Dec. 4 meeting.
Aside from Martinez, only Allen scored in double figures as he had 11 to trail Martinez’s 19. Falslev had nine points with seven rebounds and Deyton Albury also had nine points. Templin scored eight points with six rebounds and was a team-best +15 in the plus/minus.
Utah State will stay on the road for its next game with no stop in Logan planned on its way to Fresno State for a Friday rematch of a game USU won 89-83 in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum on Jan. 4.
