Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
LOGAN -- The Utah State Aggies (3-2) bounced back from a first half funk Saturday night and improved their 20-1 home record against in-state opponents defeating Southern Utah University (3-4), 89-49.
The pesky T-Birds shot only 34.8 percent from the field in the first half, but hung around thanks to their 12-of-12 shooting from the free throw line.
The T-Birds played zone the whole night and limited the Aggies to a 46.4 percent shooting performance in the first half.
"One thing you have to against zone defense is get a lot of offensive rebounds, and we didn't do that," said Aggie Head Coach Stew Morrill. We haven't seen much zone this year and it threw us off kilter in the first half."
The T-Birds out rebounded the Aggies 19-11 in the first half and senior T-Bird guard Davis Baker led the way with six rebounds.
Aggie junior guard Jared Quayle gave the Aggies a 13-point lead midway through the first half but the T-Birds used their 3-point shooting to keep the game close. T-Bird junior guard Ryan Brimley hit a 3-point shot with 5:14 remaining in the first half to cut the deficit to one. Brimley finished with 12 points and two assists.
"There were two totally different halves on our part. For whatever reason, we were not as geared up in the first half as we should have been. In the second half, we obviously got it going a lot more and played much better," said Morrill.
The Aggies definitely turned things around and dominated the second half, out-scoring the T-Birds 49-17. Aggie junior forward Pooh Williams scored 17 points on the night shooting 6-of-7 from the field and 4-of-5 from the 3-point line in his third game back from surgery.
"I got a rhythm and got open looks and just took them," said Williams.
Williams tied his career high with 17 points and also had a career high two steals.
Utah State opened the second half with a 16-0 run capped by a layup from junior forward Matt Formisano and the Aggies never looked back. Utah State continued to pour on the points hitting 59.4 percent of their shots. Freshman guard Preston Medlin had a big night scoring 17 points off the bench.
"I knew I was going to get my shots tonight because my teammates are good at getting me open," Medlin said. "That is how this offense works, and I was just hitting tonight."
The Aggies played tough defense in the second half. Junior center Nate Bendall chipped in a career high three blocks and sophomore center Modou Niang had two blocks to help the Aggies hold the T-Birds to 20 percent shooting from the field and 10 percent from the 3-point line.
Southern Utah Head Coach Roger Reid was pleased with the way his team stayed with Utah State in the first half, and said he is trying to see the silver lining in the game.
"This is a good team that we are talking about, and this is a tough place to play. We made some shots, we did some good things," said Reid.
The Aggies finished the game with a punctuation mark as junior guard Brian Green stole the ball and went coast-to-coast for a layup to put Utah State up by 40.
