WBB Preview: Aggies Head South For Bout With Utah In SLC

Utah State will face in-state rival Utah in the Delta Center on Wednesday evening. For head coach Wes Brooks, it's another familiar program after Utah State’s matchup with Ohio State last week. He coached at Utah for two years and knows the program and the staff well.

Utah is the second Big 12 team the Aggies will face this year after falling 95-65 to Colorado. Utah is the better of the two teams and was picked to finish sixth in the league, offering a tough task for the Aggies who are now on a five-game losing streak. This is also the closest thing to a home game Utah State will have for quite some time, coming in a neutral-court environment in the state of Utah. This is the sixth game in a row away from home for the Aggies, and they have two more before they get to play in Logan again.

Utah is coached by Gavin Petersen, who assumed the position just a few weeks ago when Lynne Roberts accepted the head coaching job of the LA Sparks of the WNBA. The Utes are 3-1 since Petersen took over, including a 78-67 win over the No. 3 team in the country, Notre Dame. They are 6-2 overall, and while the Utes aren’t ranked, they are receiving votes after their upset over the Fighting Irish.

Utah touts another efficient, high-scoring offense that the Aggies will have to deal with. The Utes pass the ball, get open looks and knock down shots. They also shoot the three-pointer well. The team is loaded with scoring options, with Gianna Kneepkens, Maye Toure, Jenna Johnson and Kennady McQueen all averaging double figures. They also have an impressive unit around those scorers to help facilitate with players like Ines Vieira, Matyson Wilke and Reese Ross.

Players To Know

Gianna Kneepkens: The main scoring option on the roster full of scorers is Kneepkens, and it’s not particularly close. Kneepkencs, a junior, has been working her way back from a season-ending injury last year and the preseason All-Big 12 Team honoree has been, unsurprisingly, stellar for Utah so far this season. 

This is her fourth year with Utah, and she’s been averaging double figures ever since she arrived. She is a lethal scorer from anywhere on the court, averaging 17.1 points, 3.1 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.3 steals per game. She’s shooting 47.1 percent from the field, 42.6 percent from behind the arc and 88.9 percent from the charity stripe. She’s leading the team in scoring.

At 6-0 with athleticism and a sweet shooting stroke, she’s extremely difficult to guard. Her range can’t be ignored, but when she gets chased off the three-point line she can get into the lane where she can score, rebound and draw fouls. When she does get stopped, she’s a willing and able distributor who can get the ball to one of the many other weapons on this Utah team.

She’s been on a run this season, and nobody has really figured out the secret to slowing her down. Her season-low is 14 points against Northwestern, which she bounced back from by dropping her season-high of 24 points against McNeese. She is coming off a team-high 16 points, three rebounds and two assists against Notre Dame.

Ines Vieira: Vieira is a senior, who, like Kneepkens, has been at Utah for her whole career. She is a fantastic playmaker and distributor capable of elevating the play of everyone around her, leading the team in assists and steals. She’s good for a few rebounds per game and she can fill up the hoop when she needs to, but she shines as a facilitator.

She is averaging 7.1 points, 2.4 rebounds, 6.0 assists and 2.3 steals per game. She’s a pretty efficient shooter but is especially reliable at the line where she is shooting 87.5 percent. She showed out against Weber State earlier in the year when she recorded 12 points, a rebound, eight assists and three steals. She was pretty quiet but still delivered a passable all-around performance in Utah’s last game with five points, three rebounds, five assists and one steal. 

Maye Toure: Toure is a player who can do a bit of everything on both sides of the ball. She is the team’s second-leading scorer, second-leading rebounder and leading shot blocker.

She is a senior in her first year at Utah and played with Utah State’s Sophie Sene at Rhode Island for a couple of seasons before landing with the U. The two 6-3 forwards will have plenty of time to get reacquainted when they face each other in the post.

Toure is averaging 12.8 points, 5.4 rebounds and just under one assist, block and steal per game. She’s a pillar of Utah’s frontcourt, but she has taken a few threes this season and is hitting them at a clip that is at least a little bit worrisome, shooting 54.4 percent from the field and 33.3 percent from deep, though her performance 58.8 percent performance at the line is lackluster.

She started the season strong with six straight double-digit games, including two 20-point games in a three-game span, but she has slowed down a bit. She’s averaging seven points in her past two games and is coming off a nine-point, three-rebound game against Notre Dame.

Reese Ross: Another pillar of the frontcourt, Ross is the leading rebounder for Utah. She is a sophomore in her second year with the program and has made a pretty big leap from her freshman season. She hasn’t started a game in her career yet, but this season she’s averaging 21.1 minutes on the floor per game.

With such a deep and reliable scoring core, Ross isn’t expected to be a big part of that facet of Utah’s game, but she is an important piece to both the offense and defense. Ross is averaging 9.4 points per game and shooting 58.7 percent to do it. She’s also snagging a team-high 7.0 rebounds with 1.8 assists and 1.3 steals per game.

She had a strong start to the season but has since settled a bit. She scored in double figures in three of her first four games, including her season-high of 17 in the season debut, but hasn’t reached that mark since. Her best rebounding performance of the year was against Saint Joseph’s when she grabbed 10, narrowly missing a double-double due to her eight-point scoring performance. She had five points, eight rebounds and three assists in her last game.

Stats To Know

Assist Rate: Utah is an exemplary passing team. The Utes move the ball often and carefully. They make smart, intentional passes that get to their intended target, leading to plenty of open shots.

They are averaging 19.8 assists per game for an assisted shot rate of 66.4 percent. With only 16.9 turnovers a game and a turnover rate of 19.3 percent, they have an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.17.

Leading this effort, of course, is Vieira, but the Utah system sets everyone up to move the ball around and seven Utes are recording an average of at least an assist per game with two more players sitting at 0.9 APG.

Three-Point Percentage: The Utes are also a prolific three-point shooting team. They take, and make, a lot of deep shots. Per Her Hoops Stats, this year, they have attempted 226 three-pointers, 12th-most in the nation, and hit 83, second-most in the nation.

They are shooting 36.7 percent from deep and getting 37.6 percent of all their points from behind the arc. This results in high-scoring games for the Utah offense. It has eclipsed the century mark twice this year and is averaging 82.8 points per game. 

Kneepkens is the main threat from deep, but she is reinforced by McQueen with a 40.5 percent three-point percentage, Wilke with a 36.1 percent three-point percentage, and a slew of other reliable shooters such as Johnson, Vieira and Toure.