Utah State men’s basketball coach Stew Morrill sat in the team room deep within the Dee Glenn Smith Spectrum Friday, summing up his team’s wild home opener in one concise statement.
“Basketball is a strange game.”
The Aggies, who trailed by 18 points at halftime to the visiting Weber State Wildcats, had just completed a comeback victory unlike any starting freshman forward David Collette had ever been a part of.
“Never have I been down that much at halftime and come back and won by that much,” Collette said.
USU led by as many as 15 points in the second half, ultimately beating the Wildcats 72-61 in a game that looked ugly early for the home team.
The Aggies struggled on both ends of the floor in the first half, relying almost exclusively on Collette and sophomore Jalen Moore’s combined 8-of-10 shooting while the rest of the team totalled just 3-of-19. Even USU’s foul shots weren’t falling.
“I think it was nerves,” Collette said. “Our first real game coming out of the exhibition games, we knew they were going to come in and play hard, and they took it to us that first half.”
Coach Morrill added his own thoughts on the team’s nerves.
“I wasn’t real happy,” Morrill said. “That didn’t even look like anything that I’ve seen in practice, it was disturbing how anxious we were. You could tell by the free throw line how nervous we were.”
A struggling Aggie defense allowed Weber to shoot nearly 58 percent from the floor in the first half, including 5-of-10 from beyond the arc.
“We were about as bad as we could be in the first half,” Morrill said. “We couldn’t guard them, we couldn’t make a shot.”
USU came out of the break with a vengeance, scoring the first eight points of the period and feeding off of a suddenly revitalized Spectrum crowd.
“I know it was loud in the first half, but when we came out and made a few plays in the second half it got loud,” Collette said, emphasizing the HURD student section’s impact on the game. “That propelled us big time, that pumped us up.”
The crowd grew more raucous as freshman guard Julion Pearre hit a pair of foul shots to draw the Aggies even with the Wildcats 53-53, then erupted after a two-handed Collette jam gave USU its first lead of the game.
For the next six minutes, the Wildcats didn’t score a single point.
“We made a lot of plays in the second half and just looked like a totally different basketball team,” Morrill said. “It was a fun way to win.”
Moore, who finished with 20 points, added that coach Morrill’s halftime with the team lit the fire that spurred the Aggies’ comeback.
“No one should come in here and blow us out like they were doing,” Moore said.
The Aggie defense that allowed Weber’s offense to thrive in the first half held the Wildcats to four field goals 17 percent shooting.
“That’s what we learned tonight,” Collette said. “Feed off the noise, feed off the hype, and take it to the other team. This is going to propel us through our season and help us out a lot.”
Collette ended the night leading the Aggies in scoring with 22 points, adding six rebounds and five steals to his statline.
The drastic turn of events gave the near-10,000 fans in attendance a show, and with an entire season before the Aggies, Morrill said it best.
“Basketball is a strange game. You never know what’s going to happen.”
