Utah State 58, Utah 57
LOGAN — Utah's Kevin Bradley had a huge smile on his face as his team was about to inbound the ball with 28 seconds left, down by one point to Utah State.
"That's just the confidence I have," said Bradley, who expected to be the man to crush the Aggies with a final dramatic basket before a sellout crowd of 10,270 and a KSL-TV audience Wednesday night.
It was a play called "Compton," for the school that the junior-college transfer last attended, and it had been put in this week for this game. Bradley dribbled into the middle, Aggie Bernard Rock with him all the way, and Bradley finally loosed a leaner that bounded around and out and was tipped at a couple of times.
Finally, the ball fell off the rim, and all the smiles belonged to Utah State, which for the second time in two years had upset the Utes on the floor of their own Smith Spectrum, this time 58-57 in a mighty defensive struggle.
USU moved to 5-1, while Utah fell to 4-3 for the season. It was a rare second straight loss for the Utes, who fell to Southern California Saturday. They had not lost back-to-back in non-league games since 1994 and lost only once back-to-back in conference since then.
"That's when your life passes before your eyes," said USU coach Stew Morrill about the agonizing final bounces of the ball on the Ute rim. "I thought one of those was going to go down, didn't you?
"It certainly helped being at home," Morrill added, grateful for the wild support of a crowd that flooded onto the floor at game's end.
"Everything didn't go as planned," said Bradley, a villain to the Aggie crowd after a first-half elbow thrown at Tony Brown's head. He was booed whenever he touched the ball after that. "I choked, I guess you could say," Bradley said. Hunsaker expected him to shoot a jumper, but he tried to get closer.
Bradley tied teammate Phil Cullen for the Ute scoring lead with 13 points, including a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 2:41 left that helped close a 58-53 Aggie lead to 58-56 and was the last made field goal of the game.
Utah State was led by Brown's 18 points, which included 8-for-8 at the free-throw line. Brown made four of his seven shots despite a Ute defense determined to stop him. "You could tell they kind of had a game plan to not let me touch the ball, on a few plays especially. It's a good thing we have a lot of people that can do a lot of things, and that kind of counters that," said Brown.
Teammate Shawn Daniels added 15 points, six in a critical period of 2:38 minutes that helped the Aggies to that five-point lead after a 52-52 tie.
Daniels also took advantage of a play put in for him especially for this game. With Utah holding a distinct height advantage, the 6-foot-6 power forward was to pull a big defender outside and drive past him, and that's how he broke the tie and drew the fourth foul on Utah center Nate Althoff with 6:28 left.
Both teams missed a couple of shots, and USU's Curtis Bobb rebounded a missed Travis Spivey layin attempt and tiptoed on the sideline until fouled. Bobb, though, missed both free throws with 17 seconds left, and Utah's Britton Johnsen rebounded to leave Bradley smiling and sure that a win was imminent.
Instead, Hunsaker was later saying that 22nd-ranked Utah is a young team that hasn't the poise the Aggies have this season. "Utah State is a very seasoned team, very accustomed to winning," he said. "We don't have any seasoned leadership in any position."
"I think our experience came into play," said Bobb. "We were very poised down the stretch. We've been in a lot of games like this with three, four minutes to go. We kinda took our time. Coach said (if) we hang around through the whole game, we'll find a way to win like we always do."
USU, with four starters returning, won 19 straight games last season. Three of this season's games have seen the Ags surviving in the end.
"We've played in a lot of big games, four of us at least," said Brown. "They (Utah) don't have but one or two guys that played significantly last year in the end of a game, so we had a lot of experience on our side."
USU scored the game's first seven points, but Utah made five consecutive 3-point shots, three by Cullen, for a 22-18 lead that eventually went to 38-30 just before halftime on two Chris Burgess baskets. A Rock three left the Ags down five at the half, but Morrill found it hard to think his team was that close. Utah had an 18-9 rebound advantage, 5-1 on the offensive glass, and shot 54 percent to USU's 43 from the field. Its defense was far more active as well. Saving the Ags were 15 free throws, 12 made, to just 5-for-7 free throwing by Utah.
The Ags went to changing defenses and presses and rebounded and defended harder in the second half, and Utah made just five of 24 second-half shots while the Ags were 10-for-23. USU picked up 21 of 38 available rebounds.
E-MAIL: lham@desnews.com