USU 83, UNT 70
LOGAN -- To those who subscribe to the Cold War Theory that the best defense is a good offense, there was Tony Brown Thursday night.Charged with guarding the Big West Conference's leading scorer and player of the week -- North Texas freshman Chris Davis, who averaged 21 points to stand ninth in the NCAA -- Brown, the Utah State sophomore who's a pretty fair shot himself, showed first-strike capability.
Brown hit his first five shots and had 13 points halfway through the first half in the Spectrum. Meanwhile, a rattled Davis shot 1-for-8.
Utah State went on to lead by as many as 28 before going soft on their visitors, the lead draining to eight in the last minute.
A final burst, with the starters back in, and the Aggies had an 83-70 win in what coach Stew Morrill called "a tale of two halves."
The first half was a masterpiece that saw the Ags leading by as many as 24 behind 60 percent shooting, Brown's 13 points, 14 from Troy Rolle, Bernard Rock's nine assists, 4-for-13 shooting by Davis and 0-for-7 shooting by NTU forward Deginald Erskin. In the second half, it was North Texas that scored 47 points, but its 16-for-37 shooting made its progress too slow.
With the win, USU moved to 7-0 in Big West Conference play, stayed two games ahead of league favorite New Mexico State (14-5, 5-2), which invades the Spectrum on Saturday, and now has one more win with nine games left in the regular season than the Aggies had in all of last season at 16-5. They also tied the school record for its best-ever start in league play. They can beat that with 8-0 if it should pass the New Mexico State test.
"No matter what any of you say, it's a win. I refuse to feel bad about a win," said Morrill, who probably didn't phrase his feelings in quite that way to his team in a postgame squad-room talk that got rather loud. It was loud because North Texas outrebounded USU 44-41, had 21 offensive rebounds and outscored the Ags 47-36 in the second half.
"We got blown out here last year by 31," observed NTU coach Vic Trilli, whose team got its first-ever win over Utah State, 94-90, in the rematch in Denton last Feb. 27.
USU finished with five double-figure scorers led by 19 each from Brown and Rolle, 15 each from posts Shawn Daniels and Dimitri Jorssen and 10 points and a lifetime-best 13 assists from Rock. Jorssen added 11 rebounds, a game-high.
With two 3-pointers in the final two minutes, Davis finished as NTU's top scorer with 16 on 6-for-24 shooting. Brown said Morrill had told him as long as Davis's shooting percentage was poor, he didn't care about the freshman's point total. Erskin added 15 on 5-for-13 shooting and tied teammate Brandon Gilbert with eight rebounds.
Thursday's Aggie win never really seemed in jeopardy, though Davis did a little dance after hitting a three to cut USU's margin to 78-70 with :59 left. Rock stemmed the Greenie run with a free throw followed by a Rolle old-fashioned 3-point play and another Rock free throw.
"That's our time," said Rock about the final minutes. Utah State won four straight on the road the last two weeks by owning the last few minutes of each game.
"We had a mental lapse in the second half and were pretty lucky to hold on," said Brown, who wasn't pleased that USU frittered away 20 of the 28-point margin. "I like to get a lead as large as you can," he said. "We didn't come out ready to go the second half. You could tell right away."
Not quite. Brown hit a 16-footer to open the half, power forward Daniels raced end-to-end with a rebound-to-dunk crowd-pleaser, made another dunk, and Rock hit two fast-break layins to run it to 57-29 with 15:43 left. The Ags made a few mistakes along the way that started to catch up to them in that stretch, but North Texas was just wildly shooting and didn't make much of a dent until scoring eight straight against the Aggie bench from 11:43 to 8:30.
Morrill put the starters back in and held things off for a while, rested them a minute and then had to call on them again with 1:52 left and the lead down to 77-67, when NTU took to fouling with some success.
"It's a disappointing half, when you play like that, but we are 7-0, and who'd have thought we'd be that?" said Brown.