LONG BEACH, Calif. — Utah State's basketball team has a three-game win streak and a 16-4 record. The Aggies stand second in the Big West Conference at 8-3, just a game behind UC Irvine. Tony Brown tied his career-high with 27 points last Thursday, Jeremy Vague scored a career-best 25 points in Saturday's win and Desmond Penigar averaged 18.5 points in the two games.
But this weekend, the Aggies face their sternest test of the season.
Thursday night at 8:30 MST in Long Beach State's Pyramid, the Aggies meet a resurgent 49er team whose power forward, Travis Reed, is the league's player of the week coming off back-to-back career-highs of 30 and 31 points in two road wins.
On Saturday night at 7 in the Bren Center, the Ags meet the defending regular-season champions who have won 11 of their last 13 games, including a 67-66 shocker against the Aggies in Logan to break USU's 31-game home-win streak.
USU coach Stew Morrill pessimistically says, "To think that we're supposed to go on the road and win these games is ludicrous. You're not very smart if you think that."
It's hard to argue.
The Aggies have a chance, should they get more stellar play out of Vague and point guard Ronnie Ross to support Brown and Penigar, to take over first place this weekend. They have just as much of a chance to fall to the middle of the pack.
Morrill adds that last season's 28-6 Aggie team was trounced 71-56 at Long Beach, where it's won once in the last 12 tries, and lost by five at Irvine.
"So this is a tremendous challenge for our basketball team but a fun one," Morrill said. "We're approaching it very upbeat; we're excited about where we're at. If we want a chance to win in these two ballgames, we have to play better than when we played them at home, especially on the defensive end."
NOTES: The CSULB game will be telecast tape-delayed starting at 11 p.m. Thursday on the WB network in Utah. Satellite coordinates for the live telecast are on the KU Band at telstar 6, transponder K28 . . . USU's national RPI is No. 34 . . . Brown needs 18 points to take 10th on the school career scoring list; he is one of three Ags to ever score more than 1,400 points with 300-plus assists and 100-plus steals . . . Saturday's win over Cal Poly marked the first time in 11 games that the Ags had shot better than 50 percent from the floor (60.4). They also broke a two-game streak of being outrebounded — the only two times this season.
E-mail: lham@desnews.com