LOGAN — Just a few minutes after Aggie fans were chanting his name at the Spectrum during a postgame interview at the end of CBS’s national broadcast Saturday afternoon, Utah State’s Karson Templin quickly re-established his persona as a gritty, blue-collar basketball player.
Realizing how sweaty he had left his seat during the press conference, the junior forward quickly grabbed a towel and thoroughly mopped up his perspiration before Aggies head coach Jerrod Calhoun arrived to answer questions from the media.
Not that Calhoun likely would have minded sitting in a little Templin sweat under the circumstances.
“If we don’t have him (today), we don’t win the game,” Calhoun said of Templin after USU’s hard-fought 71-66 over first place San Diego State.
On a day when USU’s two leading scorers, MJ Collins Jr. (3 for 14, 12 points) and Mason Falslev (3 for 7, eight points), were off their games, Templin stepped offensively, scoring a team-high 18 points to help pull the Aggies (18-3 overall, 9-2 in the Mountain West) into a first-place tie with the Aztecs (15-6, 9-2).
New Mexico (8-2, 17-4) can make it a three-way tie atop the Mountain West standing with a win at San Jose State (6-15, 1-9) Saturday night, but regardless, thanks to an 11 a.m. tipoff, the Aggies have a little extra time to enjoy their biggest win of the season.
And it was a well-earned victory at that. After battling back to tie the game 34-34 at halftime after being down by as many as 11 points, the Aggies then trailed 52-45 with 10 minutes left before mounting their comeback against one of the best defensive teams in the country in front of a sellout crowd of 10,270.
“San Diego State’s a very good team, and we obviously had this game circled because they’re at the top of the conference every year,” Templin said.
“But we can’t get too high, and we can’t get too low. We have New Mexico (Wednesday at Albuquerque) up next, and a good Wyoming team again so we have to get onto the next one, but we’re happy to get this win today.”
Utah State pulled out its third straight victory over San Diego State despite shooting 35.1% from the field in the first half and just 40.6% for the game.
The Aggies, who missed their first 11 3-point attempts of the afternoon before Templin finally connected on one more than 14 minutes into the game, finished just 6 for 26 (23.1%) from 3-point range and were only 13 of 23 (56.5%) from the free-throw line.
“I really want to shout out our players to find a way to win this game as ugly as we played offensively,” Calhoun said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been a part of that, where your two best players got 6 for 21 and you have 18 turnovers (and win).
“But the difference was we were the tougher team the last seven minutes of the game. To outrebound a (San Diego State coach) Brian Dutcher team by 15 is the ultimate test of character, and our kids have that and they have an unbelievable belief in each other.”
Freshman forward Adlan Elamin (5 for 12, 13 points, game-high eight rebounds in 34 minutes) had another big game for the Aggies, including one of their biggest baskets on a short lob pass from Templin that staked the home team to a 68-61 lead — USU’s largest advantage of the contest — with just under two minutes remaining.
“Come to practice. You’ll see me and Addy do that all the time,” Templin said of the key play. “I love playing with him, because he can shoot it, and he can also catch the ball. I don’t know how high it was thrown, but man, he went up and got it. It was great. “
The Aggies, who only had two turnovers over the final 10 minutes of the victory, then weathered a brief scoring tear by SDSU guard Reese Dixon-Waters, who put up five points in about 20 seconds to cut USU’s advantage down to two points.
But senior Aggie point guard Drake Allen helped keep the Aztecs at bay with a driving layup and a free throw in the final minute.
Trailing by five points with 23 seconds left, San Diego State missed a pair of 3-pointers and the Aggies ran out the clock after rebounding the second one, much to the joy of Calhoun.
“I mean, that’s why you get into coaching,” said Calhoun, who was very animated while high-fiving USU fans and students after going through the postgame handshake line.
“It’s seeing the joy in your players’ faces, and knowing that kids have camped out for three days and knowing that our donors stepped up to keep all these players here. The worst thing you can do as a coach is let people down, right?”
Some members of the USU student section known as The HURD started camping out in tents outside of the Spectrum immediately following last Wednesday night’s win over Wyoming. That group of hearty fans seeking the best seats became known as “Camp Calhoun” and were treated to a visit from Calhoun and one of his daughters Friday night.
Fortunately for those now-happy campers, the tipoff of Saturday’s contest was likely the earliest in the history of the Spectrum for a USU men’s basketball game, so they were able to come inside when the doors opened at 9:45 a.m. and warm up before the showdown with the shorthanded Aztecs.
San Diego State played without the services of 7-foot forward Magoon Gwath, the reigning MW Defensive Player of the Year, and sophomore guard Elzie Harrington, who are both sidelined with injuries.
Not having Gwath to protect the rim certainly helped the Aggies’ cause, and the home team ended up with a 40-22 scoring advantage in the paint while outrebounding the Aztecs 46-31.
Dixon-Waters (19 points, three 3-pointers) ended up being the only SDSU player to score in double figures, and the visitors shot just 40.4% as a team and were 6 for 24 from 3-point range.
Junior guard Myles Byrd, who was just 2 for 12 from the floor for eight points in USU’s home victory over San Diego State last year, had another rough outing at the Spectrum, ending up 3 for 12 from the field and scoring seven points.
“That was a good basketball game with two good basketball teams. I thought we had some looks in the second half that didn’t go in,” Dutcher said. “BJ (Davis) had a tuck-in ball screen jump shot. Reese (Dixon-Waters) had an open corner 3. (Miles) Byrd had a couple of rhythm shots.
“(The Aggies are) really good, so when you get an open shot, you have to make it. We didn’t make enough to win tonight. It was hard-fought. The rebounding was the deciding factor.”
Calhoun said it took a while for the Aggies, who led by two points just briefly early in the first half, to figure out that Templin might be able to be more of an offensive factor, but once they did, USU went on a tear late in the first half, going on a 12-2 run over the final 2:10 to tie the game at 34-34.
Templin, who was averaging 8.1 points and was 8 for 23 from 3-point range coming into the game, knocked down two straightaway 3s to help spark the Aggies’ offense, and the Texas native ended up going 7 for 10 from the field, 2 of 3 from 3-point range equal his career-high of 18 points.
Always energetic and feisty, Templin also came off the bench to pull down seven rebounds and relentlessly battle the Aztecs in the paint.
“I couldn’t have done any of that without my teammates,” Templin said. “They trust me enough to throw it inside. (The Aztecs) were switching all game, so I had a lot of mismatches and it opened things up for me. My team needed it tonight, so I delivered.”
USU’s leading scorer at 19.0 points per game, Collins started the game 0 for 10 from the floor and 0 for 6 from 3-point range before coming alive late in the contest and knocking down a couple of key 3-pointers.
That helped the Aggies, who trailed 52-45 with 10 minutes left, go on a 23-9 run over the next eight minutes that changed the outcome of the game.
“I think we had 10 turnovers at halftime, and we only had three in the second half,” Dutcher noted. “And we were getting shots, but obviously not making them enough.
“To their credit, they hung in there. They grinded at home and found a way to win. Our defense was solid, but we gave up baskets down the stretch that we didn’t give up early in the game. They were running off stuff that we guarded earlier in the game, and they had success with it late.”