For the second game in a row, Utah State had a chance to take a commanding lead in the race for the Mountain West title. But, also for a second consecutive game, the Aggies blew that chance, this time with a 89-72 defeat at San Diego State. It’s the most points given up by the Aggies this year and second-most allowed by USU in the Jerrod Calhoun era (highest was 93 at Colorado State in 2024-25).
Utah State entered the game with a one-game lead over San Diego State in the conference standings, but with the loss the two teams are now tied for first place with New Mexico one back back in third. But the Aztecs had far more to gain in this game than the Aggies had to lose. SDSU was on a two-game losing streak with its at-large NCAA hopes all but dashed by those losses. A win over Utah State would revitalize that and the Aztecs were fully aware of that.
“They were just hungrier than us. That’s probably the disappointing thing,” USU head coach Jerrod Calhoun said. “I thought they just they looked a step faster, closer to the ball, winning 50-50 plays. That’s all this is about down the stretch. Which team wants it more? Throw out the schemes. Like, you’re going to have schemes, you got to change a little bit. But at the end of the day, man, the hungrier team’s going to win a championship.”
Early on, Utah State appeared up for the challenge of defending its spot in the standings while playing in one of the most hostile environments in the conference. The Aggies hit three 3-pointers in the opening minutes and took a 13-8 lead. Adlan Elamin scored eight points as part of that early run and accounted for two of those 3-pointers.
And that’s about as far as the positives went on offense. The list of negatives grew far longer.
Aside from a three-minute span in the first half, during which the Aggies made five of six field goal attempts, they shot just 41.4%% in the game. The most drasticly cold shooting came from beyond the arc. After those early 3-pointers, Utah State made just four the rest of the way and ended the night shooting 29.6% from distance. The ice-cold shooting from deep was a drastic departure from its recent form where the Aggies had been shooting 41% from three with 10.7 makes on average in its last six games.
The 3-point percentage would be worrysome on its own but an even bigger problem with that low rate of makes was the high rate of attempt from distance in the first half. The Aggies went 4 of 17 from three in the first half with only four shot attempts at the rim (though they were a perfect 4-of-4 on said attempts).
Calhoun said the Aztecs were able to “discombobulate” his team with their length.
“It’s what San Diego State does,” Calhoun said. “They just force you to take bad shots.”
While Utah State tried to work from the outside in, San Diego State worked from the inside then out. The Aztecs scored their first nine field goals in the paint before working the ball out to the 3-point line. Pharoah Compton scored 11 points — tied for his highest point total since late January — with Tae Simmons also scoring 11 and Magoon Gwath tallying eight. All three forwards were bullying USU in the paint from the opening tip.
And once the Aggies tried to adjust to tighten things up in the paint, they left 3-point shooters open. In particular, Reese Dixon-Waters. The senior guard hit three 3-pointers on the night, all in the first half, as part of his game-high 20 points on the night.
All-in-all, Calhoun didn’t have a whole lot of positives to say about the defense.
“Defense is about guarding the basketball, staying out of rotations. I thought our pass battles were really bad,” Calhoun said. “When you’re not you’re not causing any pressure on the passc, guys just catch it and they shoot direct shots at the goal. So, I thought our past battles, our ability to help guys off ball, and closeouts was as bad as I’ve seen all year.”
And that poor effort on defense was far more concerning to Calhoun than any of the struggles on offense.
“We’ve never beaten (San Diego State) with our offense. It really has nothing to do with our offense,” Calhoun said. “We were 3-0 in these games against Brian Dutcher’s teams. And we won every game with our defense. We usually don’t score any points against these guys. We usually get about what we had tonight and we usually win.”
With the mostly lifeless offense and the season-worst defensive performance, the Aggies gradually fell further and further behind. From 16 at halftime to as much as 24 points in the second half. The Aggies put together a couple short runs that trimmed the 20-plus point lead down to 16 points, but never got closer than that the entire latter half.
Mason Falslev and MJ Collins led those handful of late scoring runs as they combined for 23 second half points. Collins finished with 18 points, Falslev with 14 but it was too little too late from both.
As much as the loss hurts, along with the fact that Utah State is now on a losing streak for just the second time this season, chances for a Mountain West title remain fairly high. An outright title is much harder, and now requires Utah State to post a better record than the Aztecs in the final 1.5 weeks of the season. But a share of the title is assured if Utah State can manage to take down each of Grand Canyon, UNLV and New Mexico — two of those games being at home in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum.
