Reno, Nev. • It didn’t have to go down to the final seconds.
In what would become a bitter defeat, a 53-52 loss to Nevada on Thursday night at Lawlor Events center, on a miracle shot by Deonte Burton, it will be only natural for Utah State to play the "what if" game.
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What if Brockeith Pane hadn’t kicked the ball out of bounds in the waning moments, giving the Wolf Pack the ball to set up Burton’s heroics?
What if the Aggies hadn’t shot 7 for 23 in an 18-point first half?
What if USU hadn’t turned the ball over 16 times on its way to the stretch run?
This very easily could’ve been the best win of the season for Utah State. Instead, the Aggies are left with questions to answer, and a short turnaround to do so, seeing that a road game against Fresno State comes on Saturday night.
"A lot of it is my fault," Pane said. "I had seven turnovers tonight. That’s half our turnovers. If I had taken a little better care of the ball, we would’ve won."
Utah State seemingly used everything in its arsenal to get this win. The Aggies came out in a junk defense, a triangle-and-two set where Pane and Preston Medlin shadowed Burton and Malik Story, while the other three defenders played a zone.
And it worked. While Nevada scored at will a month ago in the Spectrum, the Wolf Pack struggled mightily on Thursday night.
Where Burton worked magic in the Spectrum, shooting his team to a win before the Utah State faithful, he was largely shut down on Thursday night. Until the final moments, that is.
Only Story, with his hot shooting, kept the Wolf Pack within contact, leading all scorers with 18 points. Olek Czyz and Dario Hunt were bottled up, for the most part.
"We played really hard," USU coach Stew Morrill said. "I have no complaints on how hard we played and how hard we battled tonight. We wanted to stand up to them physically tonight and we were able to do that."
Twitter: @tonyaggieville
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