LOGAN — The first 120 seconds of the Wednesday evening meeting in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum between Utah State and Wyoming were competitve. After that, the Aggies rolled and concluded the night with a 94-62 victory over the Cowboys. It set a new record for the USU-Wyoming series for most points scored by either team and largest margin of victory in the nearly 70 years and 46 games in which the two teams have faced each other.
Utah State gave up a couple early buckets to Wyoming as the Cowboys quickly went to their very solid pick-and-roll attack. Leland Walker snaked into the paint for a two-pointer to start things out and then Khaden Bennett hit a pocket pass to Gavin Gores for another easy two. That gave the visitors a 4-2 lead 90 seconds after the tip-off.
Then the Aggies went on a 13-0 run and never looked back.
Make it a 1⃣3⃣-0⃣ Aggie run!#AggiesAllTheWay pic.twitter.com/g4vOwwOVVG
— USU Men’s Hoops (@USUBasketball) January 29, 2026
By halftime, the Aggies led 50-28, with the lead reaching as high as 38 points (90-52 with 3:58 left in the game).
Mason Faslev’s fingerprints were all over the early scoring by the Aggies, scoring eight of their first 12 points. It’s a trend that’s been seen in several recent games as well. Falslev scored the first five for USU against Colorado State, five of the first seven against UNLV and each of the first seven points for the Aggies against Nevada. Falslev finished the game with 11 points, five assists, four rebounds and two steals.
“Veteran guys this time of year are really important,” USU head coach Jerrod Calhoun said after the game. “Guys that have been through a lot of basketball, you’ve got to be on top of your stuff. Attention to detail. What they’re running on a baseline out, how we’re defending pick and rolls. All those things. It’s all in the details. And I think as you get later in the season, the older players got to step up.”
Wyoming tried to counter Utah State’s early haymaker by playing a zone defense. The Aggies have struggled shooting from outside and the Cowboys were likely hoping Utah State couldn’t shoot over the zone.
But if that was the assumption, it ended up being a poor one as Utah State had its most productive day from beyond the arc against a Division I team this season. The Aggies his 13 3-pointers (second only to the 19 made against Westminster in the season opener) and made the Cowboys pay for daring them to shoot.
Kolby King and Adlan Elamin were two players that factored heavily into USU’s zone-shattering offense. King set up shop early in the corner and hit three first-half triples from that spot. Thanks to his 3-point shooting, King ended the night with a season-best 20 points (which included a season-high-tying four 3-pointers) which was the highest scoring mark among the Aggies. He also led USU with seven rebounds.
Elamin didn’t go off scoring-wise, putting up just nine as the sixth-highest scorer for USU, but he got high praise from Calhoun for his work against the zone. The true freshman had a career-best five assists in the game (with only one turnover) to go with five rebounds and four steals.
“He was ultimate advantage. We would have been silly not giving him the ball in the high post at 6-9, 6-10, seeing over defenses,” Calhoun said. “He had four assists at halftime. He was making every right read. There was a couple where he didn’t square up inside the zone. But I thought his attention to detail the last two days, his motor, he comes in every day and has a great spirit.”
Utah State’s other top performers statistically on the day were Garry Clark (13 points, five rebounds), MJ Collins (12 points, four assists) and Tucker Anderson (11 points).
King’s performance, in tandem with Clark and Anderson among others, gave Wyoming a taste of its own medicine. The Cowboys have been one of the top teams in the country in bench points, averaging 32.8 from players coming off the pine. On Wednesday, Utah State outscored Wyoming 54-13 in bench points.
“Our bench guys, the last two games they’ve played excellent,” Calhoun said. “At Colorado State, they gave us a huge boost. Tonight they gave us a huge boost. Tuck and Jordy [Barnes] are going to get in this rotation one way or another. They’re going to keep fighting and clawing. And tonight, the power of the pass. When you pass the ball and you move the ball and you play for each other, this team’s dangerous.”
The “power of the pass” was certainly in full effect for Utah State in this game with its 28 assists (another season-high vs D1 opponents) to just five turnovers. It’s the only time USU has had at least 28 assists and fewer than five turnovers in a game since at least 2004 (as far back as searchable/reliable game log data on Stathead’s database).
Five different Aggies had at least four assists — Drake Allen (six), Elamin (five), Falslev (five), Collins (four) and Elijah Perryman (four).
As Utah State kept hitting shot after shot and racing toward a stellar night of offense, Wyoming’s offense stuttered and stalled all night. The pick-and-roll scoring that served them well for two early buckets couldn’t find a groove. Freshman center Gavin Gores, who had averaged 10.6 points over his last five games, managed just four with only one made field goal. Walker wound up with 24 points, but 12 of those came in the final six minutes of the game when the fate of both teams had long since been decided.
The Aggies’ switch-heavy defense simply stymied the ball-screen actions from the Cowboys.
“We had hard switches every time they came up to brush, every time they came and set that screen. It was just a lot of communication out there,” King said. “That’s why our defense, what it was today, stopping they pick and roll because that’s what they mainly do, try to get in the middle of the paint and try to execute from there and dish out. So we repped that in practice.”
Utah State now sits in a tie for second place in the Mountain West with an 8-2 record, the same as New Mexico. The next matchup for the Aggies will come Saturday morning, a home against the first-place team in the conference, San Diego State (8-1 in conference games). A win would put Utah State a half game ahead of the Aztecs, though would still end the week in a tie with New Mexico if the Lobos win their game against San Jose State on Saturday.
