SAN DIEGO — After pulling off a minor upset, the Utah State Aggies now face a major challenge.
Utah State (29-8), a 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament, will take on the tournament’s West region 1 seed Arizona (33-2) at 5:50 p.m. MT Sunday at Viejas Arena in the second round.
Ranked No. 2 in the last AP Top 25 poll before the start of the postseason, the Wildcats spent 10 weeks in the top spot after opening the season with 23 straight wins.
“We’re obviously very excited to play Arizona, a storied program with a great coach,” USU head coach Jerrod Calhoun said during a pregame press conference Saturday afternoon.
“We have a ton of respect for the Wildcats, but our guys are excited. We’ve had a quick turnaround of prep film sessions...and I think our guys are in a really good place.”
The Wildcats pummeled No. 16 Long Island 92-58 in the first game on Friday, while the Aggies upended No. 8 Villanova 86-76 a few hours later.
It was the second win in the NCAA Tournament in the last three years for Utah State, which beat No. 9 seed TCU 88-72 in 2024 as a No. 8 seed to set up a collision with No. 1 seed Purdue in the second round.
The Boilermakers blasted the Aggies 106-67 in that contest on their way to playing UConn in the national championship game.
But only two Aggies, junior guard Mason Falslev and junior forward Karson Templin, are still on the roster from the 2023-24 season, and Calhoun was hired to replace Danny Sprinkle a couple of weeks later.
Friday’s NCAA Tournament win over the other Wildcats (24-9) was the first as a head coach for Calhoun, and the first tournament victory ever for the rest of the team as well.
“I mean, we obviously celebrated the win; you’ve got to celebrate every win, especially at this stage,” said USU wing Adlan Elamin, who totaled 13 points and seven rebounds against Villanova.
“But we didn’t come here to win one game. We know our goals. We know what we want to get to. We’ve just got to focus on the next game.”
It’s certainly not going to be hard for the Aggies to focus on playing Arizona considering the Wildcats’ impressive resume.
Now in his fifth year as the head coach in Tucson, longtime Gonzaga assistant coach Tommy Lloyd has already compiled 145 victories — an NCAA record for most wins in the first five seasons for a new head coach.
Lloyd was named the 2026 national coach of the year by the Sporting News on March 12 after guiding the Wildcats to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the second time in his tenure at Arizona, as well as an NCAA record 12 wins over Top 25 opponents prior to the start of the NCAA Tournament.
Lloyd, who took Arizona to the Sweet Sixteen twice in his first four seasons, certainly isn’t anticipating bowing out of this year’s Big Dance in the second round after winning the Big 12’s regular-season title and the conference’s postseason tournament with wins over UCF (81-59), No. 7 Iowa State (82-80) and No. 5 Houston (79-74).
“It’s hard to say until I see them in person and coach against those guys, but they’ve certainly got a lot of talent, right?” Calhoun replied when asked where he thinks the Wildcats rank as far as the tough teams he’s ever faced as a head coach or assistant coach.
“They’ve got two to four NBA guys, and they’ve got size at every position. I would say the only other team right now in today’s college basketball is the University of Michigan that looks anything like them with their size.”
The Wildcats’ size starts with 7-foot-2, 260-pound junior center Motiejus Krivas, who was rather hard to understand during Saturday’s press conference because his mouth was naturally too far away from the microphone.
Known as “Big Mo,” the Lithuania native averaged 10.4 points and 8.0 rebounds per game while also racking up 66 blocks this season.
“They’re a very big and physical team,” USU forward Zach Keller said. “Our job is to match that, and they’re obviously a Top 5 rebounding team. That’s on our plate as well.”
Senior guard Jaden Bradley (13.1 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 4.5 apg) also starts for Arizona, while the rest of the Wildcats’ starters are all freshmen.
Six-foot-4 guard Brayden Burries (16.0 ppg, 4.7 rpg) is the team’s leading scorer, and 6-foot-8 forward Koa Peat (13.7 ppg, 5.4 rpg) and 6-7 forward Ivan Kharchenkov (10.2 ppg, 4.2 rpg) are also scoring in double figures.
“I think he’s an X factor, right?” Calhoun said when asked about Kharchenkov. “He’s got size, positional size. He’s tough, and I think he’s 7 out of his last 11 from 3-point range.
“He’s shooting a high clip right now, and those guys play off the bigs. When you have that kind of size for perimeters to be able to play off those bigs, it makes life pretty good.
Calhoun continued on Kharchenkov: “We’ve got to know where he is at all times. We understand he wants to attack with his right hand, so we have to get him left. I think he’s really tough. They’ve got a lot of guys that are tough, so it starts and ends with our physicality, but (Kharchenkov) is certain a glue guy, X factor for them, for sure.”
While it was Bradley who beat Iowa State in the Big 12 tournament with a buzzer-beater, it was senior guard Anthony Dell’Orso who came off the bench to abuse the Cyclones for 26 points after averaging just under nine points per game this season.
Meanwhile, 6-foot-9 senior forward Tobe Awake (9.5 ppg, 9.5 rpg) and freshman guard Dwayne Aristode (4.1 ppg) are also key reserves for Lloyd.
Bradley led the way against Long Island on Friday, scoring 14 of his game-high 18 points in the first half. The Wildcats opened the game with a 19-6 flurry and never looked back, taking a 53-29 lead at halftime and pulling away front he Sharks by as many as 38 points.
But after going 6 for 10 from 3-point range in the first half, Arizona didn’t shoot a 3-pointer for the first 14 minutes of the second half, which hasn’t been particularly unusual for the Wildcats those season.
Although Arizona is shooting 36.3% from 3-point range as a team and Burries has 59 treys, the Wildcats are averaging 16.3 3-point field goal attempts per game — an average that ranks them 354th in Division I basketball this season.
Of course, Arizona is also shooting 50.3% from the field overall, while holding its opponents to 39.% from the floor.
“It’s a 40-minute game,” Calhoun said. “I think there’s going to be so much made of Arizona, and rightfully so, but we have 29 wins for a reason, and I think our guys need to understand that. They need to lock in on the details of this scout and play our game.
“I think the teams that are successful this time of year have an identity. We have a true identity on both sides, and every team has different challenges. The challenge with these guys is their size, so we need MJ (Collins Jr.) and Mason and Drake (Allen), all those guys to use their quickness against their size.”
After winning their first 23 games of the season, the Wildcats suffered an 82-78 loss at No. 9 Kansas on Feb. 9, then dropped a home game to No. 16 Texas Tech, 78-75, five days later.
Arizona has won 10 games in a row since those back-to-back defeats, but Lloyd certainly has his concerns about facing Utah State on Sunday.
He first talked about the Aggies’ unique defense philosophy and their ability to change and disguise their defensive looks, then noted that Utah State’s offense also requires plenty of attention when his team is on defense.
“Offensively, they’ve got a really creative system,” Lloyd said. “It’s based on a lot of player movement, and they have multiple options within it. ... They’re a team that’s kind of breaking the mold, and they’re doing a great job with their off-ball actions, and in multiple screening actions.
“... But they also have players that are good and then opportunistic in the ball-screen opportunities they have. It’s definitely a unique system, and it’s going to present a lot of challenges.”
Sunday’s second round game will be the second time that Utah State and the Wildcats have faced off in the NCAA Tournament.
Longtime head coach Stew Morrill and the Aggies were matched up against No. 3 seed Arizona as a No. 14 seed in Boise in 2005, resulting in a 66-53 loss to legendary Wildcats coach Lute Olson.