As the outdated proverb states, “no good deed goes unpunished.”
And in some way, after Utah State received the outright convention title to safe the No. 1 seed within the Mountain West tournament, the Aggies have discovered themselves “rewarded” with a matchup in opposition to the one staff to sweep them through the 2025-26 season.
On that staff’s dwelling court docket.
Utah State (25-6 general) will face No. 8 seed UNLV (17-15, 11-9) at 1 p.m. MT Thursday within the quarterfinals at the Thomas & Mack Center. The Rebels managed to maintain off a decided effort from Wyoming down the stretch Wednesday afternoon, edging out the Cowboys 73-70 within the first recreation of the postseason tourney.
“(Utah State head coach) Jerrod Calhoun does a great job; He’s an outstanding coach, and they’re a great basketball team,” UNLV head coach Josh Pastner stated of dealing with the Aggies for a 3rd staff this season. “They’re really a high-level group. I mean, any job that opens for anywhere in the country, Jerrod Calhoun is going to have his pick of which job that he wants. I think he does a great job.
“They’ve got a lot of great players. They play hard. They’re well-coached and we’re going to have to play our best game of the season if we want to have an opportunity to win the game.”
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Unfortunately for the Aggies, the Rebels arguably already did that final week once they handed Utah State its worst lack of the season. After taking a 32-24 lead into halftime, UNLV blistered the nets for 60 factors on their approach to a 92-65 rout at the Thomas & Mack Center.
The Rebels have been additionally the one visiting staff to win at the Spectrum this season, getting back from 14 factors down with 13 minutes left to win 86-76 on Jan. 20.
“Those were two totally different games,” Calhoun stated. “In the first one, we were up 14 late in the game and we just didn’t get the stops. And certainly, the last game was not good at all. But there’s just points in games where there are momentum swings, and I feel like every time we’ve played them, they’ve had those.
“I think it’s going to start and end with our defense. We have to have the ability to keep guys in front and keep them out of the paint. And they’re big and long and athletic, and they switch all the ball screens. So, we’ll have a better attack with that. And, you know, we’ve just got to get back to playing championship-level defense.”
The Aggies final took the court docket for a recreation Saturday evening once they managed to outscore New Mexico 94-90 at the Spectrum to win the Mountain West regular-season championship outright for the second time in three years.
Afterwards, Calhoun gave his staff Sunday and Monday off earlier than resuming practices on Tuesday.
“We had a very good practice on Tuesday and a really solid practice on Wednesday — not a lot of contact,” Calhoun stated. “We went low, low on our workloads. So, that means it’s about an hour and five minutes, and I would say about 20 of those minutes today was contact. Yesterday was full contact after two off days.”
Tuesday additionally ended up being an excellent day for the Aggies so far as postseason accolades go. Junior guard Mason Falslev was named the Mountain West Player of the Year, whereas Calhoun was tabbed because the MW Steve Fisher Coach of the Year.
Falslev was additionally positioned on the MW All-Defensive Team, and junior ahead Karson Templin chosen because the Sixth Man of the Year. Senior guard MJ Collins Jr. (second staff) and graduate guard Drake Allen (honorable point out) additionally obtained honors for his or her play throughout Utah State’s ultimate season as a member of the Mountain West Conference.
A Cache Valley native, Falslev is presently second on the Aggies in scoring (15.9 ppg), first in rebounding (5.7 rpg), first in minutes performed (31.9 mpg), third in assists (2.9) and tied for first in steals with Allen (1.9 spg). He joins Sam Merrill (2019) and Great Osobor (2024) as Aggies to win the Mountain West Player of the Year award, whereas Calhoun is the third USU coach to be so honored, following within the footsteps of Craig Smith (2019) and Danny Sprinkle (2024).
“I’m very, very happy for the guys that received the awards,” Calhoun famous. “You know, you’re only as good as your teammates in basketball, right? So, I think all these awards are team awards. We were on the bus heading down to Salt Lake to get on the plane, and the players were very energetic and started chanting everybody’s name as the awards were being posted on Twitter and Instagram.
“I think we have a team that’s a true team. Everybody’s happy for each other’s individual success. But now, I think everybody knows we’ve got two tournaments left, and we all need each other.”
Currently sitting twenty ninth within the NET rankings and thirty sixth within the KenPom.com scores, the Aggies seem to be a lock to hear their title on Selection Sunday, no matter what occurs in Las Vegas. But they’d clearly additionally love to enhance their seeding scenario and exorcise their Rebel demons Thursday afternoon with a win on UNLV’s dwelling ground.
And whereas Utah State misplaced by 27 factors there a bit of greater than per week in the past, the Aggies ought to have elevated hope of a victory after watching Wyoming (18-14) very practically pull of a light upset of the host faculty. The Cowboys trailed by as many as 16 factors within the first half and have been down 44-31 at halftime earlier than making a run at the Rebels within the latter a part of the second half.
A ten-0 spurt and a putback by Dennis Damarion with 8:26 remaining helped Wyoming take its first lead for the reason that opening minute of the sport, and the Cowboys managed to draw back by as many as three factors late within the contest. But a 3-point play and a pair of free throws by senior ahead Kimani Hamilton — in addition to a key block by Tyrin Jones — within the ultimate 19 seconds of the sport was sufficient to give UNLV the win.
And a big win, at that.
Prior to Wednesday, UNLV hadn’t crushed a non-Air Force opponent within the Mountain West tournament in additional than a decade, regardless of internet hosting the occasion yearly.
“I believe, in life, that everything is deeper than it looks on the surface. And while I wanted to beat San Diego State in our last game so darn bad, if we had, we would have been the fifth seed and our first game would have been against Air Force,” Pastner identified. “By the loss — which I would have rather have won, obviously — it gives you the opportunity in the first game to play Wyoming, that if you are fortunate enough to win the game, you’ve broken the streak, for crying out loud, of not beating anyone in this tournament other than Air Force over the last decade.
“That was really great to be able to do that, and I’m proud of our guys to do that.”
Hamilton led the Rebels with 23 factors, serving to offset a comparatively quiet evening from Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn. The convention’s main scorer this season, Gibbs-Lawhorn was 0 for six from the ground and didn’t rating within the second half after placing up 15 factors within the opening stanza.
But then, Gibbs-Lawhorn additionally struggled in opposition to the Aggies final week, scoring simply 10 factors and enjoying solely 28 minutes due to foul hassle. But thanks to Hamilton flattening 10 of his 14 photographs on his approach to scoring 24 factors, the Rebels didn’t really want him to beat Utah State that evening.
“I think we’ve got to push him off the block,” Calhoun stated of defending Hamilton Thursday afternoon. “We’ve got to play more physical. … We can’t let him get the ball so low because every time he gets the ball low on the block, it’s either a foul or a basket.”
“… But he’s playing at a high level. I thought he put the team on his back today and played really, really well. But then, he’s been playing well. And this is a team that has great spurt ability in scoring the basketball, so we’ve got to limit those big spurts and just stay the course throughout a 40-minute game and understand he’s a big part of our scout, that’s for sure.”
Falslev fared one of the best of all of the Aggies in opposition to the Rebels this season, scoring 20 factors within the loss in Las Vegas and ending with 21 factors within the recreation at the Spectrum. But Utah State may positively use extra offensive output from Collins within the third matchup with the Rebels. The Aggies’ main scorer this season at 17.6 factors per recreation, Collins scored 14 factors in Logan however completed simply 4 for 13 from the ground, and he then had his worst outing of the 12 months at UNLV, flattening simply two of his 10 field-goal makes an attempt on his approach to scoring 4 factors.
But on the plus aspect, Collins exploded for 21 factors within the second half of final Saturday’s win over New Mexico on his approach to placing up a game-high 27 factors in his Spectrum swan track.
“He’s going to be a critical piece; he has been all year,” Calhoun stated of Collins. “He’s the one guy I felt like should have been first-team, all-league. He’s really talented. And I think his defensive activity in these next two tournaments are going to be critical when he’s active in the zone. It really, really helps us when he gets out and gets baskets off of his defense, or his teammates’ defense.
“Getting to the free-throw line will be critical for him, but he’s coming off a great game. You know, he carried us in the second half, and confidence and momentum for him in particular should be really high.”
The winner of Thursday’s recreation between Utah State and UNLV will face the winner of the later quarterfinal conflict between No. 4 seed Grand Canyon (20-11) and No. 5 Nevada (21-11) at 7:30 p.m. MT Friday. The Wolf Pack crushed No. 12 Air Force 80-45 Wednesday afternoon to prolong the Falcons’ shedding streak to 25 in a row.
