For running a motion offense, the Utah men’s basketball team sure did a lot of standing around Friday night against Utah State.
Between the seeming lethargy and getting out-hustled and out muscled by their scrappy, energetic opponents, the Utes dropped their first game of the year in getting manhandled by the Aggies 78-65.
“They wanted it way more than we did?we didn’t come out ready,” said U junior forward Britton Johnsen. “They made us look like wimps. They out rebounded us and pushed us around.”
Though USU has now defeated Utah three of their last four meetings, it was the Aggies’ first win in the Huntsman Center in nearly a decade?as they last scored a victory over the Utes in Salt Lake City with a 74-72 overtime triumph back on Dec. 10, 1991.
“I told [my players] they really screwed up because now everyone would expect them to be a good basketball team,” said Utah State coach Stew Morrill.
The Utes hit their first two shots and took a 5-0 lead on a Chris Burgess dunk and a Britton Johnsen 3-pointer, but little else went their way all night.
During the next six minutes, Utah State went on a 15-2 run, as the Utes glued themselves to the perimeter, hit just 1-of-9 in the span and committed 3 turnovers.
“We settled for the outside shot rather than the inside game. Utah State came out with a lot more emotion,” said U coach Rick Majerus. “We have a few guys playing very well, but we couldn’t seem to get five of them on the court together.”
By halftime, the Aggies had extended to a 37-24 lead on the strength of 64-percent shooting from the field, while Utah struggled along at a 30.4 percent clip.
A pair of steals and a 6-2 run to open up the latter 20 minutes of play got the Utes within 9, but they could not sustain it, and spent the rest of the game trying to make up a double-digit deficit.
“We got some energy and defended well at the beginning of the second half, and we got some momentum, but that doesn’t matter now,” said U senior center Chris Burgess.
The Aggies were bolstered by the emergence of junior forward Desmond Penigar, who, after totaling just 9 points and 2 boards in USU’s season opener, responded with 22 points (on 6-of 9 from the field and 10-of-10 from the stripe) to go along with 7 rebounds against the Utes.
Utah State, which improved to 2 0 on the year, was motivated by a general perception that it was getting overlooked in Utah’s haste to play No. 22-ranked Alabama tonight.
“We knew we could win. They didn’t show us any respect, they didn’t take us serious,” Penigar said.
Johnsen agreed that the Utes didn’t give USU the attention it deserved.
“Everybody kept asking me about the Alabama game, but I said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to play Utah State first,'” Johnsen said.
Consequently, the U found itself trailing 65-48 with 5:14 to go before finally deciding to get serious. The Utes went on a 14-2 run over the next 3:33 to pull within 5, but the laziness and bad habits that had dogged them all game proved too much to make up for, as USU scored 11 of the game’s last 14 points to account for the final margin.
“We missed a lot of open shots, but I thought we could have penetrated more. We didn’t get a lot of flashes, we needed more penetration into the gaps,” said senior point guard Travis Spivey, who led the Utes with 18 points and 5 assists.
USU wound up shooting over 61 percent for the game (compared to Utah’s 40.8) and held a whopping 32-21 rebounding advantage?a factor as important to the end result as anything, according to the Aggies.
“We were very aggressive, particularly in the first half,” Morrill said. “We harped all week on how good a rebounding team Utah is; we knew we had to go to the boards.”
Meanwhile, Majerus, who saw a team of his lose at home for just the 11th time in 160 games during his 13-year Utah tenure, struggled to find the silver lining.
“Anything in this game that was good was far more clouded by our inability to field a five-man unit that was enthusiastic to play,” Majerus said.
Now the Utes will attempt to recover against that Crimson Tide team so many of them were apparently looking forward to. They will be in Tuscaloosa, Ala., tonight trying to score the upset.
“We’ll be big underdogs. They’re an SEC team, they’re tough, and they’ve got a future lottery pick in [Rod] Grizzard,” Burgess said.