Utah State likely had its Mountain West regular season title hopes slip through its fingers in Albuquerque with a 82-79 loss to New Mexico. Between foul trouble and cold shooting spells in both halves the Aggies allowed the Lobos to take a death grip on the conference title race with just under a month left in the season.
Head coach Jerrod Calhoun gave three simple reasons for the loss:
- Donovan Dent
- Nelly Junior Joseph
- Foul discrepancy
Dent and Joseph combined for 38 of New Mexico’s points — 23 for the former and 15 from the later — with an additional 25 coming from Tru Washington to lead the Lobos. The Dent/Joseph duo — whom Calhoun called “elite players” — caused problems for essentially the entire game and contributed mightily to the third issue Calhoun brought up.
“It’s a great luxury to have the best point guard and the best five man in the league,” Calhoun said, also adding earlier in the post-game press conference that “there’s a reason Donovan Dent will probably be the Player of the Year in the conference. He made big play after big play.”
The referees called 29 fouls on Utah State, tied for the most committed by the Aggies in a single game ever according to Basketball Reference. Per its database, USU has only committed 29 fouls two other times, in a 2018 win over Montana State and a 1971 NCAA Tournament game against BYU. The Aggies’ total nearly doubled the 15 New Mexico was called for. The majority of those whistles were directed at USU’s four centers. Aubin Gateretse fouled out with five while Karson Templin, Isaac Johnson and Isaac Davis each picked up four. Davis did so in just four minutes on the court, time he got entirely due to the foul trouble of his teammates.
And where such a gap in foul calls, a massive gap in free throw attempts will always follow. New Mexico went 27 of 34 at the line to dwarf Utah State’s 13 of 16 day at the charity stripe.
Joseph, Dent and Washington were each instrumental in drawing so many fouls. Joseph led the bunch with eight fouls drawn with Dent and Washington combining for nine other drawn fouls. Gateretse and Templin, who normally split the 40 available minutes at center (with a few sometimes going to Johnson), only played a combined 24 minutes. According to Calhoun, that hamstrung his team not just on defense, but on offense as well.
“When you don’t have Gateretse in there and you don’t have Templin in there, it’s a totally different play diagram,” Calhoun said. “It’s hard to explain, but just we couldn’t run our normal stuff with Fish in there and Isaac Davis. So I thought we got out of whack a lot throughout this game.”
Utah State had a couple of cold spells on offense, one in the middle of the first half where it made just 1 of 12 field goal attempts over an eight-minute span, and another in the mid-second half that featured nine misses in a six-minute time period. These contrasted greatly with how the Aggies started both halves, the first one especially. They made 7 of their first 10 attempts, aiding in the taking of a 16-13 lead in the opening minutes.
Despite both those cold spells, it wasn’t until the late second half where Utah State truly fell into dangerous territory. The Aggies led for nearly 22 minutes, and never trailed by more than three points until the 6:49 mark of the second half. They even had a 10-point lead, 46-36, early in the second half.
Where things went wrong was the combination of USU’s second-half cold spell, and New Mexico making 14 of its last 18 field goal attempts. That flipped things from a multi-possession lead to the Aggies and into a very dire-looking 74-66 lead to the Lobos with 2:56 left to play.
And yet, the Aggies didn’t give in. Over the next 67 seconds, Mason Falslev and Ian Martinez led a rally that tied the game at 76-76. Falslev began with a 3-pointer with New Mexico countering on a Joseph Dunk. Martinez then hit another 3-pointer followed by a steal by Dexter Akanno who got fouled on a fast break layup. He missed the second free throw, but the offensive rebound was tapped to Martinez who hit another triple to make it a tie ball game.
This push was a continuation of a game-long trend in which Falslev led the Aggies with 27 points (plus six rebounds and five steals) while Martinez added 21 points. Falslev’s effort was particularly satisfying as he’s averaging 21.7 points, 5.7 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.7 steals over his last three games after a rough patch from mid-January to the first couple games in February.
“I think the last couple of weeks it’s been brewing, I think he wasn’t playing to his standard and to his liking. In the last couple of games, we’ve just been dialing it up for him. He’s been delivering,” Calhoun said. “He had that look in his eye. You know, he did it best he could. Very, very proud of his effort tonight. I thought he was relentless throughout the whole game. And we’re going to need that down the stretch. This is the most critical part of the season. The next two weeks will probably determine our post-season fate.”
Utah State’s rally pushed New Mexico up to the wall, but an answer came quickly. Yet another foul was called and Washington split a pair of free throws. That still left a chance for the Aggies, down just one point with 56 seconds left, but Falslev couldn’t find the magic for a go-ahead jumper as his mid-range 2-pointer air-balled the attempt. Back on the other end, Washington hit a dagger 3-pointer to put the Lobos up four points with nine seconds remaining. Falslev responded by hitting a 3-pointer with four seconds left, but there would be no more miracles as Dent secured the inbounds pass and hit the two free throws after the ensuing take foul.
New Mexico now advances to 14-1 in Mountain West play, a full two games ahead of Utah State, which remains in second place at 12-3. The Aggies have a 1.5 game lead over both San Diego State and Colorado State, teams they will play one time each over the coming 21 days. That will come after USU’s next matchup, which will be at home against San Jose State. A rematch of an 85-78 Aggie victory back on Jan. 7.
