One of the last games of a busy Saturday was as wild as it gets. It may well go down as the defining moment in the 2019-20 season for the losing team, no matter how their season ends up.
There are games a losing team would love to have back, and there’s Utah State losing at Boise State late on Saturday night, 88-83 in overtime.
Utah State led by 13 at halftime and by 19 with just over six minutes to go. They still led by 18 on two free throws with 4:10 left, a 66-48 margin. It looked like they were on their way to a road win and getting back above .500 in Mountain West play.
Then Boise State rallied. And the Aggies fell apart.
Boise State’s rally grew, as they would run off 14 unanswered points to get within 66-62 with 1:22 left. Missed shots and turnovers, even by star Sam Merrill, allowed the Broncos to make the comeback. Merrill broke the run with two free throws, but RayJ Dennis hit another three-pointer, then a dunk after one free throw made it 69-67 with 35 seconds left. When Merrill made two free throws, then Justin Bean made two more after the teams exchanged turnovers, it looked like the Aggies would make the furious rally a footnote, as they led 73-67 with 15 seconds left.
That idea could not have been more wrong.
Dennis made three free throws, then Abel Porter made two more. Eight seconds remained and the Aggies were up five. It still looked like they would escape.
Then Dennis hit another three-pointer – his fourth in the final three minutes – and Justinian Jessup grabbed an errant inbounds pass and laid it in to tie the game at 75 with a second to go.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Jessup then stole another inbounds pass and nearly had a chance to win it in regulation. Overtime was coming.
At that point, the Aggies were done. The rally killed them mentally, as Boise State led throughout the extra session, at one point by seven, and took home an incredible 88-83 win.
That means Boise State outscored the Aggies 40-17 in the final four-plus minutes of regulation and overtime to go from being down by 18 to winning by five. Dennis had 19 of those points, outscoring the Aggies all by himself, and he did all of that in regulation as his teammates took care of business in the extra session, namely Jessup and Derrick Alston.
For the Aggies, this is an absolutely devastating loss. It drops them to 3-4 in Mountain West play, which is hard to fathom when you consider they looked every bit an NCAA Tournament at-large team coming out of non-conference play. They beat LSU and Florida, though the latter looks a bit less impressive than it did at the time, and had decent wins over the likes of Conference USA leader North Texas and South Florida, against losses to Saint Mary’s and BYU, the former another that has looked a bit less impressive as the season has worn on. Mountain West play has been another story, however, as they lost three in a row, two in dominating fashion at UNLV and Air Force, and have now lost four of five.
The real question now is how they recover from this. One way or the other, this is bound to define their season: either it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back and sends them further down the hole to missing the NCAA Tournament after most figured they would be there, or they rally from it with a great show of toughness to go dancing in March.
Side Dishes
For more on many of Saturday’s games, please see the Saturday Notes.
Florida guard Andrew Nembhard had the flu and missed two days of practice, but gave it a go in the Gators’ dominating 69-47 win over Auburn. He played 26 minutes and had five assists with four turnovers, certainly not his best, but more than adequate. Additionally, he helped the Gators hold the Tigers’ starting guards to 4-19 shooting on the afternoon, including 2-10 from long range.
Tonight’s Menu
A much lighter slate is on tap, and that includes the quality of the matchups as the NFL’s conference championship games take center stage for a lot of sports fans.
- Rutgers hosts Minnesota in the best matchup of the day (1 p.m.)
- The best of a few MAAC games on the slate looks to be Siena at Niagara (1 p.m.), though Rider at Canisius should be interesting as well (2 p.m.)
- Drake visits Southern Illinois in what looks to be the better of two Missouri Valley games, with Loyola-Chicago also visiting Illinois State, both at 4 p.m.
- East Carolina goes to Cincinnati later on, while Wake Forest hosts Boston College (6 p.m.)
- The last game of the night is out west, where UCLA hosts Cal (8 p.m.)
