LOGAN — The A on Old Main Hill will be a little extra blue tonight as an Aggie basketball double-header featuring both women’s and men’s hoops teams produced a pair of wins for Utah State. The women started things off with a 77-69 victory over Omaha in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum, immediately followed by a 75-51 win by the men’s team over UTEP (not to mention the volleyball team getting a 3-1 win on the road at San Jose State).
The lady Aggies’ contest tipped off at 11 a.m., but the team didn’t really find its groove until the literal afternoon as the visiting Omaha Mavericks jumped out to a 16-8 lead in the first quarter. Omaha, which was on the tail end of a three-game road trip through Utah, facing Utah Tech and BYU earlier this week, brought its best offensive effort of the week. Mavericks lead guard Sarai Estupinan took the lion’s share of scoring attempts for her side. She finished the day 8 of 20 (out of 54 team field goal attempts) for 26 points to lead all scorers. Fellow guard Cora Olsen also lit up the scoreboard with 16, making for a difficult pair to defend.
“We’re bigger this year, and so I think sometimes it takes away our strength. So those little guards, (Cal State Bakersfield), five-foot-five guard. Today, five-foot-five guard,” Utah State head coach Wesley Brooks said, referencing CSU Bakersfield guard Chrishawn Coleman and Omaha’s Estupinan. “When we’re in our ball screen covers, they’re getting around us. They’re creating space and it’s a little bit harder for us. We went zone at the end to protect ourselves against it.”
Even with the Aggies struggling to find consistent offense, they managed to pull together a couple of stretches of solid play to keep the contest close. The first was an 11-0 run which gave USU its first lead of the game, 19-16, powered by a balanced scoring and capped by four points from Marina Asensio and a 3-pointer from Elise Livingston.
That run didn’t end up providing long-term relief, however. Omaha went on a 19-7 run of its own, and only a quick 5-0 burst the Aggies at the end of the half kept the game to within four points, 35-31 at the halftime break.
USU shot just 30.3% the entire first half and were simply unable to string together enough makes to form a consistent attack on offense.
“We got to warm up a little bit better,” Brooks said. “I challenged the coaches, we got to warm up better, and that’s on me. We’ll get that fixed. And then we got to relax and just make shots. We know we can make shots. I mean, if you come to our practice, we shoot a lot. So we got to continue to just do that.”
Once the Aggies did settle down, the second half finally brought the scoring Utah State desperately needed to avoid a second straight home loss. In the final 15 minutes of the game, the Aggies made 14 of their 18 field goal attempts, including 7 of 9 threes.
Omaha didn’t want to go quietly. Estupinan kept the pressure on and a constant string of whistles threatened to derail the Aggies momentum. But eventually, Brooks’ squad brought the hammer down. And it was Livingston who swung it.
Estupinan had tied the score 69-all with 1:51 left in the game with a trio of free throws. Livingston had made a floater on the previous Aggie possession, and when an open 3-pointer on the wing presented itself, she took it.
One play later, she got an open look on the other side of the arc and drained it too.
LIVINGSTON. BUCKETS. pic.twitter.com/iafFhFL5md
— USU Women’s Hoops (@USUWBasketball) November 15, 2025
Within a span of 64 seconds, Livingston scored eight points, six of which went unanswered. It handed the Aggies a six-point lead, which would grow to eight in the dying seconds as Omaha failed to muster a response to Livingston’s haymaker.
“We kept running like the same action because it was working really well,” Livingston said. “We like did a little adjustment to it and then it created a lane. So then I (thought) ‘I haven’t shut the ball in a while, so I’ll take it to the rim.’ Then after that it kind of got me going and just the next open look I had, I just took and it was good from there.”
The entire affair showed yet again how Utah State is capable of winning ugly and after rough starts as its win on the road against Cal State Bakersfield earlier this week on Tuesday played out in similar fashion.
“When you find a way to win games, it’s always a good thing,” Brooks said. “Because we’d all rather learn through winning than losing. And we’ve been on the opposite of that here, Aggie Nation, for a long time. So now we’re trying to flip that.”
Brooks also noted that the Aggies are “for just a hot second” above .500 with their 2-1 overall record. It’s the first time Utah State has been above .500 after three games since 2021.
Aaliyah Gayles finished with a team-high 16 points and Marina Asensio had 13 points. Those two embodied the Aggies reversal of shooting form in the two halves. The pair were a combined 3-for-15 in the first half, but in the second they were 5-for-8 and had 17 of their combined 29 points. Those two laid the groundwork for the late surge, though they both fouled out, clearing the way for Livingston to make her big plays.
The second leg of the Aggie basketball double-header featured a rough defensive contest that saw Utah State’s 3-point shooting woes continue, but its great work inside the arc also continued.
The men’s team shot just 6 of 23 from 3-point range. Paired with their low output in their game against Weber State, the Aggies are 9-for-46 on long-range attempts, or 19.6%, over the last two games. That’s a frustratingly low, but not unprecedented cold spell for Jerrod Calhoun’s Aggies. Last year the team shot 16% (9 of 50) across two games against Wyoming and New Mexico in the middle of conference play.
Calhoun obviously isn’t pleased with the poor shooting, but isn’t overly concerned.
“The ball is just not going in. So how you make it go in is you’ve got to work,” Calhoun said. “You’ve got to persevere. You’ve got to get back to the drawing board. Look at why you’re missing and just keep working. But I feel like our guys would be fine.”
Utah State certainly made things work even without 3-point shooting. And that primarily came through its transfer forward, Garry Clark. Clark has already had a solid start to the year, scoring in double figures every game prior to Saturday, but went off for a season-best and team-leading 20 points. He also snagged 13 rebounds for his third double-double of the season. Through four games, Clark has averaged 14.0 points and 10.8 rebounds per game.
“He’s just got a tremendous work ethic. He’ll be a fan favorite this year because he just does what he can do. He doesn’t play outside of his game,” Calhoun said. “He’s just a wonderful kid. He plays hard, good teammate, got a good set of hands. He can snatch rebounds. He can catch balls. I think he’ll get better and better. I think he’s just scratching the surface. His motor is really good. He plays hard all the time. And he just does what we ask him. And he doesn’t do things he can’t do. And I thought he was awesome.”
Much of Clark’s scoring came at the free-throw line. In fact, he attempted only six shots all afternoon, making five of those attempts. The rest of his points came from going 10-for-16 on free throws as he drew 10 fouls throughout the game.
The two crucial stretches for Utah State came late in the first half and then the middle-to-late portion of the second half. Those two moments consisting of a 13-3 run and later an 18-1 run.
That first run occurred at a time where UTEP was very close to making it a close game at halftime. The Miners had cut Utah State’s lead to just four points after it’d been as high as 10. With four minutes left on the first-half clock, the score sat at 21-17 and Calhoun wasn’t happy with what he was seeing on the court. So he opted to change things up.
“It was just ugly basketball,” Calhoun said. “Neither team could put the ball in the basket. I call a timeout and just said, ‘We’re pressing. I’m not watching this anymore. We need our defense to spark us.'”
Utah State’s shift to an all-out full-court press had an immediate effect. The first play from UTEP ended with a tipped pass and an easy layup for MJ Collins. The second resulted in a travel that later became two made free throws for Garry Clark. Over the final four minutes of the half, the Aggies’ pressure defense created five turnovers that spurred what became a 13-3 close to the first half.
Utah State might have settled for holding steady with the double-digit lead it established at halftime, and for much of the second half the Aggies’ advantage hovered between 13 and 17 points. Then, with the game starting to wind down, Utah State sent its parting shot: an 18-1 burst that got the Aggies nigh on a 30-point lead late in the game.
An underrated part of the success in this game came from the impact of true freshman point guard Elijah Perryman. He made his first career start due to the injury to Drake Allen, who sprained his ankle against Weber State earlier this week. According to Calhoun, Allen will be back next Friday when USU takes on Tulane, but Allen was in street clothes on Saturday. And that meant a career-high 30 minutes for Perryman, who scored 11 points and tallied five assists, two rebounds, two blocks and a steal in that time. Though he also had five turnovers.
“We knew it was going to be a tough, tough game for him. I thought he responded really well,” Calhoun said. “He’s not scared of the bright lights. You know, he’s a kid that has extreme confidence. Wish he would have had a few less turnovers, but I thought him and Jordy [Barnes] did a nice job running the team.”
Along with his comments regarding Perryman, Calhoun ended up having more positive things to say after this game than he did after the 10-point win against Weber State, a closer-than-expected result that led to the Aggies dropping eight spots in the KenPom rankings. Defense and rebounding, in particular, stood out. UTEP shot just 37% from the field and committed 16 turnovers. Utah State also dominated the boards winning the battle on the glass 41-24.
“I really am really proud of our guy’s response from the other day. I really am,” Calhoun said. “I think we’re at a good place.”
This game led to a small jump in the KenPom rankings as the team now shifts toward its next challenge with the upcoming Charleston Classic. The Aggies will play Tulane in Charleston, South Carolina followed by a game against either Davidson or Boston College depending on the results of games on Friday in the multi-team event.
