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Notes and quotes from Utah State's season-opening 72-61 win over Weber State on Friday night at the Spectrum.
• The Aggies trailed, 47-29, at halftime. The comeback was Utah State's biggest since overcoming a 13-point halftime deficit against New Mexico in the 1999 Western Athletic Conference tournament. Utah State has now won 29 straight home games against in-state opponents. The last in-state team to win in Logan was BYU, which claimed an 82-73 victory on Jan. 8, 2000.
• Utah State turned the game around with a zone defense in the second half, when Weber State missed 19 of its first 21 shots and scored 14 points. Coach Stew Morrill said he has used zones throughout his career, but he usually does so on the road. This year, however, will be different. "With this team, it will be whenever and where ever," he said. "We've got a lot of new people out there." Jalen Moore, who scored a career-high 20 points for the Aggies, noted Weber State had good luck against the zone defense in the first half. "They were tearing it apart," he said. "But we came out and were flying around in the second half. That helped us a lot."
• Utah State David Collette scored 22 points, setting a school record for the most points by a freshman in an opening game of a season. Jaycee Carroll owned the previous record of 19, set against Georgia Southern in 2004. Collette spent a redshirt year with the Aggies before going on an LDS Church mission. He is 21 years old and recently married. "Weber State is a good team," he said. "They played hard and were ready in the first half. We came into the locker room with our heads down. We thought all was lost. Then everybody started picking everybody else up and we came together in the second half."
— Steve Luhm