Late run seals Aggies' 11th-straight win

Hey, another ugly victory! Sound familiar???

I don't know if this has ever once been the case during the Stew Morrill era, but I honestly believe this team is a better road team than they are at home. Not that many of the wins this year have been at all pretty, and it's nice to actually be winning, but the whole winning ugly thing is bound to backfire at some point.

Maybe it's the tension of playing in front of opposing fans gives them the mental push they need to get fired up, or maybe they get a little too comfortable playing on home turf. Whatever it is, it sure would be nice if this team could get a little more fire when playing in The Spectrum. The tough part about that is that the thing which has traditionally fueled teams of the past has been basically non-existent this year. More on that tomorrow though.

As for this basketball game, Seattle was a bigger, more athletic team than I had imagined would be rolling into town. I'll own up that I didn't do any homework on them, so it's really nothing more than me being guilty of typecasting them of what I envision a WAC underdog to be. That size and athleticism worked pretty well for them though, especially when it came to tossing double-teams on Preston Medlin and throwing a guy with a major height advantage up in Spencer Butterfield's grill.

Having Deshaun Sunderhaus go off for 23 points and 10 rebounds helped Seattle's cause too. USU basically had no answer for him down low. The closest thing was Kyisean Reed's defense down there, but he was battling foul trouble for a lot of the time.

After pulling away by a bit in the first half, the Aggies gave up a little run at the end to close that lead to only six points.

In the second half, the Aggies really only showed up for the last 15 minutes of it. They didn't put a single point on the board until Marcel Davis' free throws nearly five minutes. Seattle put together a 14-0 run in the meantime. USU didn't hit its first field goal of the second half until there were under 12 minutes to play.

It got a little sloppy again for the Aggies for a bit, the teams traded baskets a little bit, and USU finally pulled away in the closing minutes.

All in all though, this was another ugly game though. Hate to beat the horse dead on that, but it was. And again, it's important to note that last season, USU was losing a handful of these ugly games, so to be 12-1 is pretty tremendous. Also if things click in a big way soon, that's about as good a spot as you can be in while you hit your stride and start winning some really impactful games.

Starting to wonder if that is going to be the case ever, or if this team just plays up and down relative to its competition.

Saturday is going to be a quality test to get more of a feel of where this team stacks up.

NOTES

• Tonight was a rough one for Jarred Shaw... He just didn't seem to have any fire in there. Really the last few games, if there's one player I could compare him to, it's Kyisean Reed of last season. Has the talent to dominate, but doesn't always seem to know how or where to apply that. And in Shaw's defense, he still made some big plays, especially down the stretch defensively.
• Saw a little bit of positives from Ben Clifford tonight at least. He was finding spots to get open for some passes down low and cashed in on them.
• Marcel Davis was one of the guys dishing those passes all over the place. At one point he had assists to Reed on four straight trips down the floor. He had seven assists on the game to go with three steals and 13 points. Straight-up excellence once again from the freshman.
• Then there's that Medlin kid, going off for 18 points, five assists, and three steals... He was best when it mattered most too, scoring 11 of those points in the final 10 minutes of the game.
• Amazingly, neither Medlin or Davis had a single rebound in this game. USU got beat on rebounds again too, which was such a strong point for the team early on. Cannot figure out why it's taken a step backward...

Player of the Game: Kyisean Reed

20 points, 10 rebounds, a block, two steals, and a bunch of dunks... It was an alright evening for Kyisean Reed. A handful of players made big plays late in this game, but Reed was the one making it happen early, and doing little things throughout the rest of the contest. Spectacular game for him. Just hope he saves some of these dunks for if/when The Spectrum is packed later this season.