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Koby McEwen sat behind the table in the media room Saturday after dazzling those inside the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum and voiced the confidence he has in his young team. The true freshman guard had led the last-place Utah State Aggies to an upset win over Fresno State in Logan with 22 points and eight rebounds, but he said he isn't worried about the Mountain West Conference standings.
Opposite, in fact.
"Wins, losses — we'll peak at the right time come March," McEwen said, "and everything will be fine."
A win can work marvels. Utah State (9-11, 3-6) snapped a four-game conference skid by topping the Bulldogs, but the schedule doesn't ease up. Not one bit. The Aggies host MWC leaders Nevada (18-4, 7-2) at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Spectrum. The Wolfpack are the class of the conference at the moment. As evidenced, Fresno State, now fourth in the MWC, already swept the regular-season series against Nevada.
While the Aggies are tied for the worst record in the league at 3-6, the parity in the MWC has been rampant this season. When USU coach Tim Duryea left his house Saturday night in Logan to drive to the Spectrum, Colorado State was trailing by double-digits at San Diego State. When he settled in at the arena, the Rams had completed a stunner, 78-77.
"It's a crazy league," he said. "That's all I can say."
That three-week stretch in January that featured four straight losses clearly didn't bury the Aggies. Scores around the league, Duryea said, leave coaches shaking their heads on a nightly basis. No team is unbeatable, he said. But Nevada appears to be the likely favorite to win the conference crown at the halfway point. Of the top 12 leading scorers in the MWC, the Wolfpack have four.
Guard Marcus Marshall (21.1 PPG) leads the way, while Cameron Oliver (14.9 PPG), Jordan Caroline (14.1 PPG) and D.J. Tenner (13.7 PPG) round out a formidable Nevada team coming off a 17-point win over New Mexico on Saturday. Duryea said his young team has been focusing on the games ahead, but also on the calendar.
Come March 1, he said, he wants the Aggies to be a team that is closing in on its ceiling.
McEwen agrees.
"Our aggressiveness has to be on another level," he said. "We [have] to out-match the other team every single night for us to be able to get wins because we're still trying to figure it out. We're a young team, we've got a lot of young guys."
Twitter: @chriskamrani