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LOGAN — Dating back to their days in the WAC, the Nevada-Utah State matchup has often been one to elicit drama.
It was fitting then for the chaos to crescendo on the night of Jaycee Carroll's jersey retirement.
In front of a sellout Spectrum crowd eager to witness the halftime ceremony for the Aggies' all-time leading scorer, Utah State trailed the Wolf Pack by 21 points in the first half to dampen the impending celebration and put its NCAA Tournament at-large aspirations on life support.
But on a night catered to Carroll — who often got the better of Nevada throughout his career — Utah State sparked some second half magic to extinguish the deficit and to beat Nevada 75-66.
Steven Ashworth scored 20 points, and Utah State held Nevada to 25% shooting in the second half to give the home team a chance at the comeback. The win put the Aggies a half game behind Nevada in the standings and gives it a potential Quad 1 win, pending Nevada's final NET ranking.
"I told the team after the game, the first thing I said to them was there's no stat really that can describe how that game went," Utah State head coach Ryan Odom said. "You can't look at one thing and say this is why. That game, to me, and to our team, was all about composure. It was all about playing with heart and grit."
Things couldn't have started worse for the Aggies, though. Wolf Pack forward Will Baker scored a scorching 22 points on 6-of-6 shooting in the first 5 minutes of play, and the 9,157 fans in attendance were silenced as the visitors opened up the game with a 31-9 lead.
The Aggies, who are accustomed to giving up large scoring runs, didn't whither, though.
The hosts stepped up the defensive effort and held Baker to just 3 points for the remainder of the game. The Wolf Pack opened up 14-of-15 from the field, and then finished 9-of-40. In the final 12:33 of the game, Nevada made just one field goal.
"It was pretty much just trying to make them take tough shots over and over again," RJ Etyle-Rock said. "We knew they started hot, but we knew they couldn't withstand that the whole game. Baker got off to a hot start, but we made an adjustment of trying to switch early and get a high hand to him, and eventually he was going to miss or we didn't even want him shooting after he started making the first couple. That was pretty much the adjustment."
In the second half, Utah State found key contributions on offense from several players.
Max Shulga (13 points) hit two step-back 3-pointers, Sean Bairstow (5 points) had a coast-to-coast dunk, Etyle-Rock (10 points) scored a transition layup with 10:20 remaining to even up the score at 57-57, and Ashworth's 3-pointer gave Utah State its first lead with nine minutes left.
Sticking to script, though, the Aggies didn't make it easy on itself down the stretch. The team finished just 23% from 3-point range, and several deep looks from Ashworth (2-of-10) and Taylor Funk (0-o- 6) rimmed out. The Wolf Pack hung around despite its own shooting woes, and a Jarod Lucas 3-pointer rattled in with 2:26 left to even the score at 64-all.
Utah State finished strong, though, as a team in need of a quality win in front of its raucous crowd.
An and-one layup from Dan Akin (12 points) with 1:10 left to play gave the Aggies a 3-point lead, and the team got stops on defense as Ashworth buried eight free throws to seal the game.
"That's why you love playing in front of a sellout crowd, because they can help flip the momentum for you like that. We definitely fed off of that, and I think that as it came down the stretch, they didn't have to play with the pressure that we had to play with through the whole game," Ashworth said. "So, when it kind of came down to those crunch minutes, we were already used to feeling that throughout the whole game, which, I think, gave us the upper hand in the final few minutes."
Now 21-7 on the season and ranked 37th in KenPom, Utah State still has work to do to nab an at-large bid with three regular-season games remaining. Earning its biggest win of the season in front of several Aggies legends — from Carroll, Gary Wilkinson and Stew Morrill — is undoubtedly a nice place to start.
