Utah State suffers blowout loss on the road to Boise State

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Utah State lost 82-65 to Boise State, trailing most of the game.
Coach Jerrod Calhoun criticized the team's physical performance and lack of assists.
The loss drops Utah State to second place in the Mountain West Conference.

BOISE, Idaho — Before questions started from media after the game, Utah State head coach Jerrod Calhoun used an expletive to convey how ready he felt to leave Boise.

That's how bad of a night it was for the Aggies, who lost 82-65 to Boise State on the road Wednesday night in a game where they trailed most of the way.

"I thought we got physically manhandled from start to finish," Calhoun said.

Mason Falslev led the Aggies with 19 points, three assists and three rebounds. Dayton Albury had 11 points, while Ian Martinez finished with 10 points.

The Aggies (24-5, 14-4 MW) allowed the Broncos to shoot 48% from the field and 41% from behind the 3-point line. They also lost the rebound battle 32-25, and recored only nine assists to their 22 baskets.

A high number of assists has been one of the metrics Utah State looks at to determine how well or poorly it plays each game.

"We held the ball too long," Calhoun said. "The ball didn't have the pop."

Calhoun said the team's poor defense made it impossible to get fastbreak points, which has been another determining factor to him in the quality of any given game for the Aggies.

"When you're not stopping anybody, you can't get runouts," Calhoun said. "We're a team that needs transition. We don't have big, physical, strong guys. That's our Achilles' heel."

The last time Utah State played Boise State, it took a game-winning shot by Martinez for the Aggies to escape with a 2-point win at home. But there was no miracle realized or prayer answered for Utah State in Round 2 of the matchup.

Utah State trailed by 8 midway through the first half, but an offensive dry spell by the Broncos helped the Aggies close the gap and take a brief 27-26 lead. Boise State, however, went on an 11-4 run to closeout the half to take a 37-31 lead.

The Broncos extended their lead to 11 with 12:37 left in regulation, and continued to control the game. Utah State couldn't get closer than 8 points, and Boise State sealed the deal on Tyson Degenhart's 3-pointer to give the home team an 82-61 lead with 1:48 to play.

The Aggies had a good opportunity to go into the Mountain West Conference Tournament next month with the No. 1 overall seed, especially as New Mexico lost to San Diego State on Tuesday. The New Mexico loss meant the Lobos and Aggies both had 14-3 conference records going into Wednesday.

But the loss dropped Utah State to 14-4 in conference play with just two games remaining in the regular season. The team now sits in second place going into a road game against Colorado State on Saturday afternoon.

"I think the guys were well aware of it," Calhoun said when asked if the team knew about New Mexico's recent loss and the implications of it.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.