Hot Fresno too much for Aggies

LOGAN — It would have been easy and perhaps understandable for the Utah State Aggies to place the majority of the blame for their 71-66 loss to Fresno State Saturday on their win over No. 10 Nevada two nights earlier. Instead the Aggies gave credit where credit is due.

"They are on a roll," Utah State coach Stew Morrill said of Fresno's sixth straight victory. "They came in and played better than us. It's as simple as that."

The Aggies, who had their 15-game home winning streak snapped, did concede the energy wasn't there like it should have been with a third-place seed on the line for next week's Western Athletic Conference tournament.

"It's definitely a wake-up call," said Utah State senior Durrall Peterson, who scored 12 points in his final regular-season game in the Smith Spectrum. "We definitely woke up and figured out that just because we beat (Nevada) that it doesn't mean we can't get beat. We're going heads high into the WAC tournament and we'll try to do some things there."

The Aggies (21-10, 9-7) will play Hawaii, which beat Boise State Saturday, at 2:30 p.m. in the tournament's opening round Thursday.

Utah State split with Hawaii (18-12, 8-8) during the regular season.

Fresno State held Utah State to just 37 percent shooting for the game, while holding Jaycee Carroll, the WAC's leading scorer at 21.5 points a game, to just six points on 2-of-12 shooting. The season-low point total snapped a 31-game streak of double-digit scoring games for the junior guard.

"I thought our defensive game plan solved it," Fresno State coach Steve Cleveland said. "For the most part we stopped them from doing what they like to do and that is to shoot a lot of 3s."

Utah State, which entered the game ranked third in the league in field goal percentage (47.5 percent) and third in 3-point field goal percentage (37.5), shot just 37 percent from the field for the game and 21.7 percent from the three-point line (5 of 23).

"We had a horrible shooting night and a lot of that is credit to their defense," Morrill said. "We didn't have very many guys have a good game."

Chaz Spicer led the Aggies with 22 points, and Stephen DuCharme added 13 points and grabbed a career-high 16 rebounds.

Nick Hammer came off the bench for seven points, while senior Chris Session added six along with Carroll.