Aggies load up the statsheet for win No. 20

After that abysmal showing against Arlington last week that not even I could bear to write about, USU bounced the hell back on Thursday against probably the WAC's worst team. And even though Texas State is a total patsy, the Aggies pretty thoroughly dominated them, which is what they needed to do in this one.

The finish by USU pretty damn awful, but that's sort of tradition when the Aggies have a late lead. It seems like if the team is down big, they're the ones making the strong push late, and if they're up big, all basketball ability seems to vacate.

A win is a win though, and some of the numbers put up are pretty encouraging. Let's bullet point the rest.


NOTES

• Whole hell of a lot of blocks for the Aggies tonight. Good ones even! None more excellent than Marvin Jean's though. THAT was pretty damn spectacular! His 1-6 3-point shooting wasn't so great, but hopefully he's just getting this slump out of his system before the tournament next week.
• Ben Clifford led that block party with four of them, to go with 13 points, six rebounds, and four assists.
• Texas State seemed to have a problem among all its players of acting injured every time they were involved in a physical play. It got pretty agitating, and based on their quick recoveries each time, it seems to be pretty obviously embellished. The Bobcat training staff must have imported some of that magic spray from FIFA or something.
• Officiating was pretty annoying tonight. You always know that when a team is in the double-bonus with more than nine minutes left, the ending of the game is going to be boring as hell. Turns out that was the case. Aggies got plenty of home-cookin tonight, not that it was the difference in things, but it clearly was getting to the Bobcat players. Lots of late whistles against them, but whatever.
• Jordan Stone got the start for some reason, and was his usual self for the most part.
• Speak of being their usual self, Jarred Shaw's 15 points and 10 rebounds will do just fine. So will his 7-8 shooting from the field.
• After Tenale Roland drilled a long 3-pointer in the second half, he seemed to pass up every good look from deep after that. The play-by-play says he took one more, but it seemed like maybe Stew gave him the red light on shooting the deep ball after that long one, despite it going in.
• Marcel Davis with 12 points and five steals, if you need him.
• Matt Lopez scores three points in three minutes. I still wouldn't mind seeing him earn some more minutes though, because the rest of this team could us some rest.
• Lastly, there's the man quickly becoming a legend. Coming back from injury, at times looking like he was clearly still hobbled, but never showing a shred of fear or hesitation, Spencer Butterfield was AWESOME!!! Totals go like this: 10 points, seven assists, one block, one steal, and 20 rebounds... Yes, TWENTY!!! Are you freaking kidding me???

Player of the Game: Team

A handful of great performances, but really this one was a solid all-around team effort. A total of 19 assists tell that story, not to mention different guys stepping up in different spots throughout the whole game. It was a beauty.