Cover Story: Defense And Toughness Push Aggies Past San Diego State

LOGAN – Jerrod Calhoun's vision for his second team at Utah State was influenced heavily by his first team. He knew he wanted another one-two scoring punch on the perimeter like the Mason Falslev and Ian Martinez battery. He wanted multiple skill sets at point guard to change the pace, as he'd claimed with Deyton Albury and Drake Allen. He wanted willing passers, veteran transfers hungry for an NCAA tournament run and everything else that made the 2024-25 Aggies so consistently excellent on the offensive end.

More than any of that, though, he wanted to get that awful taste out of his mouth after his debut squad collapsed in late February and March, their once-unstoppable attack subdued by physicality and their matchup zone defense exploited in much the same way. What he had just seen, in the blowout losses to Boise State, Colorado State and UCLA that ended Utah State's season, he never wanted to see again. The Aggies needed to get bigger, deeper and more athletic – to evolve into a team suited to answer the questions Mountain West play would inevitably pose.

San Diego State, as it always does under head coach Brian Dutcher, came to the Spectrum on Saturday afternoon with a binder full of questions. For much of the contest, Utah State seemingly lacked solutions. The Aggies gave the ball away 18 times, seven of them from Allen. Their dazzling one-two punch of MJ Collins and Falslev was held to only 20 points on 6-of-21 shooting. They were outscored 19-5 on the fast break, usually their element, and held to a 12-of-26 shooting performance on layups. They trailed by 11 points late in the first half and by seven in the latter 10 minutes of the second half.

Utah State teams of seasons past have depended on nearly perfect performances to overcome Dutcher's Aztecs. That's true for most programs. Unless you can match or exceed their top-tier talent and enforce your will physically, the only way past San Diego State is through elite execution. Utah State's was not, and on the offensive end particularly, it was likely closer to bad than it was good. Only once this season, at South Florida, has Utah State finished a game with a lower offensive efficiency rating. The Aggies have shot worse, per effective field goal percentage, only twice. They've suffered just one game worse from the three-point line and turned the ball over at a higher clip three times.

And yet, there was Calhoun on the sidelines with the final seconds dripping off the game clock, basking in the day's last ovation and beckoning to the exuberant hometown faithful for more. There was Collins, going about the same work on the opposite end of the floor. There was Karson Templin, explaining to Robbie Hummel on national television that the country's best fans could be found only within Utah State's hallowed basketball cathedral. There, somehow, were the Aggies, tied once more atop the Mountain West with a 71-66 victory over San Diego State.

"To win this game, as ugly as we played offensively, I don't know if I've ever been a part of that," Calhoun said. "Our two best players went 6 of 21 and we had 18 turnovers, but the difference was that we were tougher team in the last seven minutes of the game. To outrebound a Brian Dutcher team by 15 is an ultimate testament to character. Our kids have that. We have an unbelievable belief in each other, and it's we over me."

It was a battle primarily between San Diego State's efficiency for wide swaths of the game and Utah State's explosiveness in short bursts. The game began with both defenses dialed in and both offenses flailing – Utah State started 1 for 7 from the field, San Diego State opened 1 for 8 and didn't hit its second field goal until the 12:46 mark. That shot to snap the latter drought, courtesy of Pharaoh Compton, started the Aztecs on the first real run of the afternoon, turning an 8-7 Aggie lead into a 17-10 USU deficit at the 8:45 mark.

For the next six-plus minutes, as both teams slowly eased into the flow of play, the Aztecs kept Utah State at arm's length. BJ Davis answered a Falslev layup with a pull-up jumper from the elbow, one of his favorite shots. Elamin split a trip to the line, Jeremiah Oden canned a three for San Diego State, and Templin did the same at the other end, mercifully ending Utah State's woeful 0 for 10 start from deep. The lead grew to 11 with 3:38 to play and contracted back to seven less than a minute later after two Collins free throws and a pretty screen slip and floated finish from Templin, assisted expertly by Collins.

Templin had already played a key role in the opening frame, doing his best to drag the Aggie attack out from the mud, and his work still was incomplete. He met a three-pointer from Reese Dixon-Waters with his second triple of the frame and struck again at the 1:45 mark, hauling in a lob from Elamin and turning the corner on freshman Tae Simmons for a layup to slash the deficit to five points, 34-29. The junior forward had 12 points (5-of-7 shooting) at the halftime break, twice that of Utah State's next-leading scorer, with four rebounds and a steal.

"He was a beast tonight," Calhoun said. "His shot fakes, I was so proud of him. His two threes. Honestly, I've been on him about screening. It's funny, Eric Daniels down at Utah who was on my staff last year, he's like, 'You have to get KT screening better.' I told KT the other day at practice, 'Hey, ED says you have to screen better.' Well guess what. Tonight, he had two of the biggest screens.

"KT is a guy who is very curious. Curious players get better. When you have a lot of answers and you think you know everything (you don't get anywhere). That ain't him. He's constantly curious and wanting to know more about the game, more about life, and tonight if we don't have him, we don't win the game."

Finally, after nearly seven minutes without a made field goal from anyone wearing No. 22, help arrived to cap Utah State's late push. On the heels of a Simmons free throw that missed the rim, the backboard, and every other part of the basket by at least three feet, Allen heeded the advice of his coaches. He drove hard to the right side of the basket, jump-stepped hard into the lane and faked a shot. Three Aztecs were fooled into leaving their feet, a fourth was drawn out of position, and Allen fired the ball out to Elamin in the corner. Despite an admirable effort from the one defender not impressed by Allen's shot fakery, the freshman clipped the net to draw Utah State within two points. With five seconds left before the buzzer, Elamin erased that final gap, gathering an Allen miss and redirecting it back into the basket in one swift movement.

"We were down 11," Templin said. "We went into that four-minute timeout and we were like, 'Hey, we have to get something going and make better reads.' We did, and we go into halftime and it's 0-0. You have 20 minutes to beat the other team."

The second half, though on a slightly different timeline, adhered to a similar flow of play. San Diego State was slow and steady, capitalizing on Aggie turnovers in transition and supplementing those efforts with timely shot-making. Utah State oscilated between bouts of offensive impotence and lethality, relying again on Templin for tough baskets to keep the game within reach.

San Diego State pushed the lead to six; Templin broke through with a dunk. Dixon-Waters answered; Elijah Perryman and Templin chipped in back-to-back layups to cut the deficit to two. With Utah State mired in another slump, suffering more than three minutes without a field goal, Dutcher's group extended its edge to as many as seven points with 9:58 to play, 52-45, forcing a Calhoun timeout. His message to the team was simple: They had turned the ball over 16 times, fallen repeatedly into San Diego State's shot-blocking traps, and asked far too much of the bench unit. It was well past time for the veteran core, Templin notwithstanding, to step up.

"Enough is enough," Calhoun said. "You've seen their pressure now, this is 30 minutes into the game, what are we doing? Why are we giving the ball away? We just talked to them like that, like, 'Come on guys, get to spacing.' What are our spacing concepts? The reason you turn the ball over is that you don't have good space and you make bad reads. We were sped up for a big part of the game. But, we sped them up. We're very similar teams. They force turnovers, they want to get out and play fast."

By the under-8 timeout about two minutes later, that effort was well underway. It began, naturally enough, with a pair of Templin free throws. Allen contested a Davis pull-up jumper well at the other end, and Falslev involved himself offensively for nearly nearly the first time all half, cutting into the lane and drawing Davis' fourth foul after a pretty bounce pass from Templin. He knocked down both free throws to draw the Aggies within three.

It was Allen's turn next following a miss from Oden, drawing a mismatch on the perimeter with Compton, driving him to the basket and again breaking out a shot fake. Compton bit and Allen attacked, drawing a silly foul on the discombobulated sophomore and finishing a floated layup through relatively light contact. Out of the break, Allen would add one more point at the stripe, leveling the score at 52.

"When you get to the rim, they're going to meet you. Shot fake," Calhoun said. "When Drake finally shot faked with like eight minutes, Manny and I chestbumped because that's all we did for the whole week. Finally, somebody did what we had watched on film for seven games. It's like, 'Guys, just do what we told you.'

"We probably should have just attacked the center more. We wanted to set more flares. Our guys just didn't process that. When we drove it in, we wanted flares on the back side. We showed them at halftime seven clips. Every time we drove and got to the nail or the elbow, all they do is just flood to the ball. All you have to do is flare in and shoot threes. New Mexico shot four or five threes on them like that. We kind of took a little bit of that and we isolated the center. If they want to switch these ball screens, we'll go right at them and then they'll collapse and we'll kick or shot fake."

San Diego State didn't fold, reclaiming the lead on two Miles Heide free throws and trading blows with the Aggies for the next two minutes, but the game's dynamic had shifted. After 30 minutes spent chasing the lead, Utah State was suddenly dictating the terms of engagement. The turnovers and easy baskets were gone – Utah State lost the ball only twice in the last 10 minutes. San Diego State had to deal with a set half-court defense every trip down the floor, which it really hadn't faced consistently until that point. While Miles Byrd and Sean Newman found a pair of baskets to keep the game even at 59-59, the Aztecs were increasingly dependent on high-level individual shot-making. That's not a sustainable source of scoring against the matchup zone.

Worse yet for the Aztecs side, Collins and Falslev were starting to pick at the edges of a defense that had sold out to handcuff them. With Davis in heavy foul trouble and a considerable drop in defensive prowess behind him on the depth chart, cracks began to form in the once impenetrable perimeter barricade. As the final five minutes approached, Calhoun drew up a new take on a look they had shown earlier. Dutcher can prepare his team for just about anything it sees on tape, but he can't reads minds – at least, not that we know of – and design counters for plays created on the fly.

"MJ goes 3 of 14 and Mason goes 3 of 7, so you're 6 for 21," Calhoun said. "I brought them over and I said, 'You two guys have to wake up. KT is carrying us. You're the two best players on this court. Step up and take the game over.' Mason passed up a three. They were just out of rhythm, and that's a credit to Dutch and their group. They're long and athletic and it's hard to simulate what they do.

"We finally got to two (feet). We finally kicked out and we brushed. When they're going to switch like that, you have to brush them. We brushed and hit Addie for a three. We brushed and hit Mason for a layup. We brushed and hit MJ for a flare three. We had things in the arsenal that we probably should have gone to earlier."

The play began with Allen in possession at the top of the key, Collins and Elamin in either corner, and Falslev in the high post with Templin. Those two opened the action drifting toward Collins' side of the floor, Falslev making his way to the perimeter and Templin roughly parallel with him just inside the three-point line. Allen moved the ball to Falslev and cut away from the ball to limit clutter, while Collins climbed from the corner to the wing and brushed Byrd. Brush screens are a tricky little technique USU used constantly down the stretch, in which an off-ball player cuts under a teammate moving toward them, generating "incidental" contact with the defender.

If sold properly, it's a moving screen made legal – when the brushing player appears sufficiently offended by the hit, officials will see the defender following their man and initiating the contact rather than recognizing the ruse. When the defense plays it as a ball screen, it won't have time to recover on the de facto screener, who did not set his feet and won't need to regain speed like a usual screener would.

Byrd, who knows better, fought through the brush and took another step toward Falslev. Taj DeGourville, Collins' defender and one of only three underclassmen on the floor along with Elamin and Simmons, read it as a screen and stayed put on the wing, expecting to switch with Byrd and pick up Falslev on a potential drive. Heide, responsible for Templin, made the same mistake and shaded toward the Utah State bench in preparation for a screen and roll.

He was right about the first part. As Collins sliced between Templin and Byrd toward the top of the key after the contact, Templin stepped up to the three-point line and squared himself to Byrd, who had recognized what was happening and was turning to chase Collins off the line. Templin caught him perfectly, impeding his progress just enough to keep Collins clean as he took the pass from Falslev and gathered for the three-pointer that had evaded him all afternoon. It glanced ever so slightly off the back iron as it dropped through, but otherwise, it was perfect.

"I told MJ, it might have been at the end of the first half or the beginning of the second half, I said, 'MJ, if you're open, shoot the ball.' He's one of the best shooters in the country," Templin said. "If he's not hitting his shots, he'll eventually hit them. I know it. I've seen him make too many shots to have him stop shooting. We need him to shoot the ball when he's open. It makes our offense better. He came through down the stretch and he won us the game."

The next two minutes were quiet, dominated by stout defense, but Utah State snapped the spell with another haymaker at the 3:14 mark. Collecting an offensive rebound after a Templin miss from deep, Allen sent Davis to the bench for good with his fifth and final foul, and extended the Aggie lead to four points on a split trip to the stripe.

Heide halved the edge with a dunk at the other end, and Calhoun put his trust once more in his veterans, dialing up a nifty concept with Templin operating as a shadow point guard. Collins brushed Byrd on a pindown for Falslev, which turned into a dribble handoff from Templin at the top of the key. Falslev worked to the middle of the floor while Templin set a true pindown screen for Collins on the wing, severely obstructing Dixon-Waters and providing the senior sharpshooter ample time for another critical triple to set the lead at five, 66-61.

"We drew up some things out of timeouts that were not in the playbook," Calhoun said. "The ball-screen pindown for MJ Collins, they thought KT was going to roll. He set an unbelievable screen, by the way. KT, I've been on him about screening, and I think that was one of the biggest plays of the game. This was a game we had to win if you want to play in the NCAA tournament and win a league title, you have to beat these guys at home."

After a Byrd miss at the other end, Calhoun ventured further into his bag of offensive tricks. Showing the same play with the Templin-to-Falslev handoff and pindown screen for Collins, Utah State did to the Aztec defense something that very few can: Fooled them, badly, in a high-leverage moment. Byrd and Heide had switched assignments on the handoff, leaving the former on Templin as he moved to screen for Collins. Always hunting for the big play, Byrd skipped ahead a step and jumped out to disrupt Falslev's ensuing pass to Collins, who was trailed from the other side of Templin's screen by Dixon-Waters. Neither player was in position to prevent Falslev's pass when Templin slipped the screen and rolled toward the paint.

DeGourville was there as the low man, rotating over to stop Templin, but San Diego State had itself a math problem. Four defenders were accounting for three Aggies and the fifth, Newman, was fixated solely on Allen. Only Templin knew that Elamin was cutting along the baseline toward the rim, awaiting a lob the two had practiced repeatedly over the months. He hit the logo, elevated just above DeGourville and flipped the ball toward his spidery friend, who paid him back in kind with a vicious two-handed slam that nearly separated the Spectrum's roof from its foundation.

"I've thrown that lob to Adlan at least five times in practice before," Templin said. "I think that's where it comes from. I trust him to be there, he's one of the best cutters and he's a heck of a player as a freshman. I love playing with him. He's a dang good player. I'm excited to have him around.

"I watched a lot of tape on them this week. They load to the ball heavily, so I knew when I caught the ball in those short rolls – I wasn't rolling all the way to the rim – I'd look for the skip. If I had it, I'd go. If I saw a smaller guy under there, I'd go finish on him."

San Diego State was good for one more push, cutting the seven-point lead down to just two, but Utah State had met every moment in crunch time, and it had no intention to stop now. With less than a minute on the clock, Allen drew an isolation matchup with Heide and slithered past him into the lane for a picture-perfect left-handed scoop layup. When DeGourville missed his attempted rebuttal, Allen put the final nail in San Diego State's coffin at the free-throw line, his dreadful start a distant memory, and his position atop the Aggie lineup vindicated by an almost flawless 10-minute closing shift.

"It's just trying to give him confidence," Calhoun said. "Here's what I tell him. When you're the point guard or the quarterback, it is the hardest position on any team. We heard yesterday from Jordan Love. He did a 30-minute Zoom with our guys and it was incredible, the attention to detail at the quarterback position in the NFL, the amount of film studied. But, you're going to be the most critiqued guy. You'll be the most critiqued guy on social media, you'll take a beating. Drake knows that. Throughout the game, the worst thing I can do is scream and yell at him in timeouts. You can't do that in a game, that doesn't do anything.

"It was showing him the video at halftime, trying to make some adjustments and trying to continue to understand that you are playing the Aztecs. Nobody looks good against them offensively. Who has really looked good against these guys? Ever since Steve Fisher got there, how many teams have popped San Diego State and run great offense? I don't see it. You just have to keep being encouraging. I thought he made two of the biggest plays."

As the final horn sounded, Allen sat for a moment near the baseline and let it all wash over him. It had been a brutal test of Utah State's might, one that the veteran point guard and many others had not handled well for much of the game, but that meant nothing as the sold-out crowd voiced their delight with the phenomenal resilience of their Aggies. They had given San Diego State free baskets in transition, played directly into Dutcher's defensive hands, and still finished the job through outstanding defense, a shocking 46-31 edge on the boards, and timely bursts of terrific offense. Calhoun wanted a team that could find more ways to win and rise to the Mountain West's brutal challenges. On Saturday, there was little room for doubt: He has one.

"It's why you get into coaching," Calhoun said. "Seeing the joy on your players' faces, knowing that kids have camped out for three days and you're not letting them down. Knowing that our donors stepped up to keep all these players here. The worst thing you can do as a coach is let people down. You watch all this tape, you do all this game planning and you know you need this game. It's very gratifying to see that when you don't play that well. I didn't think we played very well offensively. It's very gratifying to know you have great character kids and really tough kids. This was a big testament to our toughness."

"Aggie basketball is we over me. Everybody has all these slogans and all this stuff. Our culture is simply putting the team before yourself. MJ could have kept forcing shots and Mason could have kept forcing shots. What did they do? We threw the ball inside to KT. We made the winning plays. That's a team starting to come together at the right time. Stew Morrill always says the coaching is really important, the subs and all that stuff. But, in February, character, toughness and players make plays. That was his message (at Colorado State). Players have to make plays in February, and we have a lot of guys who can do it."