Utah State basketball secures hard-fought victory over Montana State in season opener

LOGAN — The student crowd at the Spectrum managed to squeeze in its trademark “Winning team! Losing team!” chant at the end of Tuesday night’s game. 

But much to the surprise of surely everyone in attendance, the 17th-ranked Aggies were unable to secure the victory over Montana State until the final seconds of the game, forcing their fans to speed up their chant much faster than normal. 

“I thought we tightened up down the stretch,” USU head coach Craig Smith said following USU’s hard-fought 81-73 victory over the Bobcats. “We didn’t have a great start and missed some point-blank shots. I thought we played not necessarily selfishly, but I thought we wanted it easy in the first half, especially.”

The Aggies (1-0), who opened last season with a 101-71 victory over Montana State in Bozeman, trailed the Bobcats (0-1) by two points with 5:25 remaining. But good defense and clutch free-throw shooting led to a 10-0 run that finally gave the Aggies — and their nervous fans — some breathing room.

A 3-pointer by Brock Miller with 29 seconds left then stake USU to a 77-71 lead that all but sealed the home team’s first victory of the year. 

“When Brock hit that shot, it was a big-time 3,” USU guard Sam Merrill said. “I think he had only hit one shot the whole game before then, so that was huge.”

“When Brock hit that shot, it was a big-time 3. I think he had only hit one shot the whole game before then, so that was huge.” — USU guard Sam Merrill

Merrill led the way for the Aggies, scoring 28 points despite going just 5-for-14 from the floor. But the senior guard was near perfect at the free-throw line, knocking down 17 of 18 attempts. 

Merrill’s performance was made very necessary by the fact that Montana State guard Harald Frey had the kind of game Merrill had last year in Bozeman when he notched 37 points against the Bobcats. A native of Norway, Frey went 6-for-10 from the 3-point line on his way to scoring a game-high 34 points. 

“Montana State played a fantastic game,” Smith said. “They’ve got a good team. They played super hard, really unselfish and defended well. 

“I knew this was going to be a tough game. I’ve been on edge here a little bit the last 10 days or so because it’s difficult. They kind of flipped the script from where we were last year, quite frankly. New coach, a whole bunch of new players, inexperience, and when you’re preparing for 10 new players from all over the place and don’t know what they’re going to run, and so they had us off balance all night.”

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Utah State won despite shooting just 37.7% from the floor and knocking down 6 of 18 3-point attempts. But after going just 17-for-27 from the free-throw line to start the game, the home team connected on their final 18 attempts over the last 11:32. 

Junior college transfer Alphonso Anderson was a big part of that, coming off the bench to go 8-for-8 from the free-throw line while scoring 13 points. 

Sophomore forward Justin Bean added 13 points and 10 rebounds for the Aggies, while junior point guard Abel Porter contributed 10 points. 

Utah State led by as many as nine points in the first half, but the Aggies couldn’t maintain that advantage and led just 37-34 at halftime. Merrill helped staked them to a six-point lead early in the second half, but behind Frey’s deep 3-pointers, the Cats kept battling and the visitors ended up going up by as many as three points in the second half.

Jubrilo Belo added 12 points and nine rebounds for the Bobcats, who shot just 42.1% as a team, including a 16-for-26 performance from the free-throw line.