WBB Review: Aggies Suffer Slim Defeat Against Air Force

LOGAN – Utah State took an early lead, but couldn’t hang on and spent the rest of the game trying to keep up with Air Force in the Spectrum. After a heartbreaking failed comeback effort, the Aggies fell 82-77 to the Falcons and extended their losing streak, which also began with a loss to the Academy, to six games.

The Aggies started strong and raced out to a 7-0 lead before Madison Smith got the Falcons on the board. The Aggies added four more points to reach an 11-2 edge, but Air Force got started soon after and stormed back with a 17-4 run that earned it a three-point lead. The teams swapped buckets to end the quarter with a score of 20-17, the Falcons in front by a slim margin.

After giving up a substantial lead and letting Air Force back into the game, the Aggies regrouped at the break and landed another blow with a 10-0 run. They retook the lead with a layup from Jamisyn Heaton and a three from Cheyenne Stubbs to make it a 22-20 game, then kept adding to the lead and pushed it to 27-20.

Again, they couldn’t hold onto the advantage, and the Falcons pieced together a 9-0 run to catch and surpass the Aggies. The rest of the quarter was a back-and-forth affair and at the end of the half, Air Force found itself on top, nursing a two-point lead.

The third quarter is where the Aggies fell apart the last time they played Air Force, and Utah State avoided the same pitfall this time. The offense needed some time to get going, but the defense stepped up to ensure that was also true of the Air Force offense. The first field goal of the quarter belonged to Air Force when Keelie O’Hollaren made a three-pointer to extend the lead to 47-43 with 8:34 to play. 

Then, with 3:37 left in the quarter CJ Latta hit three free throws to take a one-point lead at 54-53, and after some more back and forth, she hit a layup to move Utah State's edge to two points with 43 seconds left. The lead didn’t stick, and O’Hollaren stuck again, hitting another three-pointer to put the Falcons up by one at the final break, 64-63.

Utah State slowly did what it could to chisel away at the slim Falcon lead. After two consecutive quarters of outscoring the Falcons, Utah State had 10 minutes left to claw its way back, and a minute into the quarter, the Aggies seemed poised to do just that when Sophie Sene assisted Heaton on a three-pointer to tie the game at 66. That’s the closest the Aggies would get. Air Force responded in kind as Milahnie Perry assisted Smith on a three-pointer, and the Falcons turned that into a 10-0 run that finally gave the visitors some breathing room as time became scarce. The Aggies made one last push to cut the lead to five, but couldn’t get closer than that before the buzzer sounded and let the Falcons escape with a narrow victory, 82-77.

Utah State held Perry, Air Force’s leading scorer, to just seven points, which amounts to less than half of her season average of 15.8 PPG. Star-stopping defensive performances have been a nice addition to Utah State’s arsenal down the stretch of this season, and Utah State has managed to do some really impressive things in that regard, but it doesn’t amount to much if other players are allowed to step up and compensate. The Aggies were instead dispatched by Smith, who dropped a game-high of 29 points, and O’Hollaren, who had 23. Both used a three-point barrage to rack up the points as Smith went 4 of 9 and O’Hollaren went 5 of 10 from three-point land. Those two players accounting for 27 points from deep alone proved to be costly for Utah State as it fell by a margin of less than a third of that.

Stubbs and Heaton did their best to keep up with 20 points apiece, and the Aggies got a 14-point contribution from Taliyah Logwood, but it wasn’t enough. That trio of Aggies put in work outside of scoring, too, as Stubbs grabbed three rebounds, two assists and a steal; Heaton had two rebounds, an assist, a steal and a block; and Logwood had six rebounds and two assists.

The most impressive Aggie performance outside of scoring, however, belonged to Sene. She pulled down a career-high of 16 rebounds, which was the game-high by a healthy margin, and had five points, three assists, a steal and three blocks to go with it. Latta had a productive outing as well. She had 10 points, a rebound, six assists and three steals. She set a new career high in assists and tied her own career high in steals. Mia Tarver came in off the bench and collected six points, two assists and two steals. 

The loss leaves Utah State with a 2-24 overall record and still just one conference win at 1-13. The Aggies will still have a few more tries to add to their win column, but this Air Force game was as good a chance as any Utah State will have. The Aggies did improve from their first encounter with Air Force, falling by just five points this time around rather than 12, but they improved about as much as they possibly could without actually making the switch to win the game. This team, especially as of late, has done seemingly everything except win. It has made visible, obvious and measurable progress throughout the season, and even as other teams improve and progress, Utah State has inched closer and closer to the rest of the conference. That hasn't been enough to win games, though, and the Aggies are quickly running out of opportunities.