WBB Preview: Utah State Faces Off With San Diego State In Road Bout
Utah State is looking to avenge a blowout that shouldn’t have been as it travels to San Diego State for a Saturday afternoon matchup. The first meeting should have been, and was largely close, but got out of hand late as the Aggies fell by 19, 85-66. Utah State matched up well with San Diego State, but the depth and stamina, not to mention the otherworldly three-point shooting, of a really good Aztec team proved to be invaluable as the game went on.
Utah State played well and did what it could to keep up, but San Diego State was relentless. The Aggies had a strong start and led by two at the first quarter break, and at the half, they trailed by just three. By the end of the third quarter, the Aztecs had a 10-point lead, and they pushed it to 19 in the final 10 minutes. For the Aztecs, it was their fourth-most-ever points scored in a Mountain West road game.
Utah State was only outrebounded 40-36 and has seen much worse than that this year, while each team had 30 points in the paint. The Aggies will look to match the physicality of the Aztecs this time, too.
Really, there are just a few glaring numbers that seem to explain the 19-point loss. Utah State had 20 fouls and San Diego State had nine (and shot 78.9 percent on free throws), and despite winning the turnover battle, the Aggies had only had eight points off turnovers while the Aztecs had 13. Worst of all was the shooting performance. San Diego State was 29 of 59 from the field and Utah State was 25 of 68, and worse yet, the Aztecs were 12 of 20 from deep while the Aggies were 9 of 39. If San Diego State has to shoot 60 percent from three while Utah State shoots 36.8 percent from the field to win, then the Aggies have to feel pretty good about themselves.
Utah State was also without Taliyah Logwood in round one of this series, making this the third consecutive conference rematch where Logwood missed the first but will suit up for the second. Mia Tarver was also out. Cheyenne Stubbs led the Aggies with 17 points, two rebounds, four assists and a steal. Sophie Sene came off the bench and tied what was her season high at the time with 10 points and had seven rebounds and a block.
Utah State’s freshman duo of Elise Livingston and CJ Latta have improved a lot since the last time the teams met, although both had solid performances in that matchup. Livingston had four points, one rebound and two assists while Latta pitched in with five points, three rebounds and five assists. Livingston was 2 of 4 from the field while Latta was 1 of 9 from the field and 0 of 9 from deep.
Livingston is averaging 6.5 points, 2.6 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game, and Latta is averaging 7.8 points, 2.2 rebounds and 2.0 assists. Between those two and Logwood who is averaging 9.6 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.8 steals, the Aggies should see a much better performance out of their freshman class this time around.
An upperclassman unit that this time around will include Tarver, who comes with 9.0 points, 3.4 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 2.1 steals, will help add a veteran presence in a game where the Aggies will sorely need it. Stubbs, Heaton, Tarver and Sene need to be ready to lead a team that looks very different than it did a month ago when it last faced San Diego State.
Former Aggie Adryana Quezada hasn’t shown mercy for her former school, Cali Clark’s name dots the defensive leaderboards in the conference, and Kim Villalobos is a name that, at this point, haunts the Aggie faithful, but there are other Aztecs the Aggies need to worry about.
Players To Know
Natalia Martinez: Last game, leading her team on a blinding offensive performance, the freshman Martinez tore the Aggies apart with a record-setting outing. She had the best game of her college career, narrowly missing out on what would have been her first career double-double (and wasn’t far off from a triple-double). She had 22 points, nine rebounds, seven assists, a steal and a block. Her astronomical shooting numbers looked more like free throw percentages than field goal percentages as she hit 7 of 8 from the field and 6 of 7 from beyond the arc. She had career-highs in points, rebounds, assists and three-pointers made.
It wasn’t totally without warning when Martinez came off the top rope, but the Aggies had no reason to suspect her as the type of threat she was. She had shown flashes before and had even dropped 22 once earlier in the season in a win over Wisconsin. In that game, though, she had just one rebound and one assist, and, although her shooting numbers were good, she got eight of her points from the free-throw line.
On the year, she is averaging 7.8 points, 2.0 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game. She has been quiet lately with 1.8 points, 3.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists in her past four games, although her rebound and assist numbers are skewed up a bit, bolstered by an eight-rebound, five-assist game against New Mexico at the beginning of that sample.
The Aggies have seen firsthand what Martinez can do and don’t want to see it again. Although she hasn’t been on her game lately, she is very clearly capable of high-level scoring and seems comfortable against Utah State. Beating the Aztecs will take a better defensive performance than last time, and Utah State needs to prevent anyone from having a career night like Martinez did.
Veronica Sheffey: Sheffey is a junior who, after two years as a San Diego Torero, made the cross-town jump from Jenny Craig Pavilion to the vaunted Viejas Arena.
She is in her first year with the Aztecs, but she’s putting on a clinic in the city of San Diego for the second year in a row. She had a pretty good freshman year at USD, earning a WCC All-Freshman team nod, but erupted in her sophomore year. She started in all 31 games, averaged 12.2 points, 3.2 rebounds, 5.1 assists and 1.5 steals per game and earned a spot on the All-WCC second team.
She isn’t having any trouble acclimating to her new neighborhood and is only getting better with time. Sheffey has never been one to ignore, but she has become the team’s leading scorer in recent weeks.
She's having a particularly easy time fitting in with the rest of the Mountain West, and has been playing some of her best basketball since starting conference play. Against her new conference foes, she is averaging 13 points per game. She set a new season-high 18 in just her second Mountain West game, a loss to Colorado State, and tied it two games later in a win over Nevada. She set another season high against the Aggies when she dropped 19, and in her most recent contest, she set yet another new season high of 20 points and added five rebounds and two assists in a 10-point loss to UNLV.
On the year, she is averaging a team-high 10.9 points, 3.2 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.4 steals per game.
Naomi Panganiban: Naomi Panganiban, like Martinez, is familiar with the city of San Diego. She is a San Diego native and a freshman on Stacie Terry-Hutson’s squad. Panganiban’s freshman season has had some ups and downs.
She started the season averaging 6.2 points per game in her first nine games, then had a spectacular four-game stretch right before conference play. Bookended by 27- and 24-point games, she averaged 21.5 points during the run before coming back to earth and scoring eight points in back-to-back games to open conference play. Her 12-point game against Utah State was right in the middle of a seven-game steak when her performance ticked upwards again, and she averaged 11.1 over those seven games. Since then, however, her scoring seems to be trending back down – she had nine, seven, then two points in the three games since.
Her season averages have landed at 10.0 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game. Interestingly, despite her scoring average of exactly 10 points per game, she has only scored exactly 10 once this year. She has also only scored 11 once, though she has a handful of nine-point games (four, to be exact), showing just how bifurcated her performance can be. Her season high is 27 and her season low is zero, and she seems capable of scoring just about anything in between on a given night. Those numbers aren’t non-conference outliers either. Although her season high was against Bethesda, she wasn’t boosting her numbers against lower-level opponents and her spread is nearly just as stark within the steady confines of conference play. Her season high in a Mountain West game was 17 against a very good New Mexico team and she was held to a low of two against UNLV.
There is no telling what version of Panganiban Utah State will face on Saturday afternoon, but having a wild card in the deck certainly favors the Aztecs more than it favors the Aggies. Utah State is forced to prepare for a wide range of possibilities from a player who has only started half of her games. She is liable to be the difference in San Diego State’s favor if she goes unchecked, but if the Aggies devote too much defensive capital towards the Panganiban that only scores four points, one of San Diego State’s other capable scorers is somewhere on the loose.