All Utah State needed Tuesday evening was 40 minutes of quality basketball against UNLV in Las Vegas and it would be able to claim the title of Mountain West men’s basketball champions. But 20 of those minutes featured some of the worst offense from the normally dangerous Aggies while the other 20 minutes showcased some of the worst defense the team has played all year. Add those two together and it equaled a 92-65 victory for the Runnin Rebels.
The path to a Mountain West title remains in USU’s hands despite this loss, but it becomes concerning that the team has now played in four consecutive games that had significant ramifications for either control in the Mountain West standings or, like on Tuesday, a chance to claim at least a share of the league title. But in these four games Utah State has won only a single time and have put forward their worst two performances of the season — a 17-points loss at San Diego State and the defeat to the Rebels on Tuesday.
“It’s concerning the way we lost,” USU head coach Jerrod Calhoun said. “You’re 40 minutes away from having a chance to win a championship and I just didn’t think we had an edge.”
The best time of the entire night Tuesday ended up being the first five minutes of the contest. Mason Falslev, who had 20 points and 11 rebounds to lead Utah State, hit a 3-pointer on the team’s first possession. A few more buckets and some solid stops handed the visiting team a 9-4 lead as the teams headed into the under-16 media timeout.
As the Aggies broke from that huddle, they hardly knew what horrors awaited them on offense — an 11-minute span of game time without a single field goal made.
From the 15:33 mark of the first half, when Karson Templin made the layup that gave USU its’ 9-4 lead, up until an MJ Collins putback with 4:29 to go in the half, Utah State did not make a single field goal. The Aggies recorded 13 consecutive missed field goals and even had a stretch where they missed four straight free throw attempts. Those misses aside, free throws ended up being just about the only source of scoring in the first half. USU scored 11 of its 24 first-half points at the charity stripe.
Perhaps the most inexplicable shooting slump came from beyond the 3-point line. The Aggies ranked 36th nationally in 3-point percentage and had shot 40.4% percent across their previous seven outings. On the other side of this matchup was UNLV’s 339th-ranked 3-point defense. And yet, USU made just one 3-pointer in the first half and ended the night making just 5 of 30 from long distance. It continued a trend for the Aggies against the Rebels as they made just 7 of 24 threes in the previous game against UNLV.
“I think it’s their length, their ability to close on the shot,” Calhoun said. “They’re extremely long. They’ve got positional size. And I think that bothers us when we play this team.”
Even though the Aggies had a half from Hades on offense, things weren’t catastrophic by the halftime break as they were only down by eight points, 32-24. Their defense had produced a pretty solid result, helped tremendously by completely shutting down UNLV’s scoring superstar Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn. The junior guard had his worst offensive output in more than a month. Over his previous nine games, Gibbs-Lawhorn had averaged 29.7 points but had only 10 on Tuesday. At halftime he had zero, courtesy of smothering defense but also helped by the fact he picked up a second foul midway through the opening half.
But as the second half got underway, the defense went from solid to non-existant. UNLV would end up scoring on 28 of its 37 possessions in the half. Gibbs-Lawhorn may have gotten all his points in the latter end of the game, but it was the combined effort of Kimani Hamilton, Tyrin Jones Isaac Williamson and Howie Fleming Jr. that would rule the day and help the Rebels to overcome the poor scoring effort from their offensive leader.
Fleming scored just 12 points but also became the first player to record a triple-double against the Aggies in program history as he added 12 assists and 10 rebounds (the final one coming on the last shot of the game). Hamilton, like Gibbs-Lawhorn, scored all of his points in the second half but he scored 24 which included making 10 of 11 shot attempts and three and-one plays. Jones put in 17 points of his own and Williamson hit five 3-pointers to give him his highest scoring total since November.
Calhoun chalked up a lot of the Aggies’ troubles against these players to mismatches with their defense unable to handle those player’s length.
“They’re 6’9″, 6’10”, extremely athletic, wiry,” Calhoun said. “I think basketball, to a degree, is all about matchups.”
Utah State’s offense moved the needle up a decent amount in the second half, partly thanks to a surprise effort from Tucker Anderson. The junior forward had played just 17 minutes over the last 34 days, but got on the court for 24 minutes on Tuesday and scored 15 points (13 in the second half). He entirely replaced Adlan Elamin in the rotation for the evening as the freshman played just 11 minutes and went 0-for-6 from the field with just one rebound.
“Addy’s just not performed the last couple games,” Calhoun said. “Tucker did a nice job. He always stays ready. We’re going to play guys that are really, really going to go down swinging. And that’s just a feel thing. Addy’s got to bounce back, be ready to go Saturday. The alertness, the awareness, the attention to detail, practice, carrying over in the game has got to get better.”
Results around the Mountain West have continued to fall the Aggies’ way to preserve their chance at the regular season conference title. San Diego State lost to Boise State to drop the Aztecs to 13-6 in MW play. Utah State, which is 14-5 in league games, faces New Mexico (13-5) on Saturday for what may end up being a winner-take-all title bout. If the Lobos win on Wednesday in a home game against a hot Colorado State team, they’ll be tied with the Aggies heading into Saturday’s matchup.
So, as Calhoun noted after the game, his team will “have another crack at it,” but his team has used all the rope it will get. If one final Mountain West regular season title is coming to Logan, it will have to come by way of a Utah State win. Nothing else can save the struggling Aggies except their own ability.
