LOGAN, Utah – Facing their fourth nationally-ranked NCAA Division I opponent in program history, the College of Idaho opened quickly, but No. 17-ranked Utah State grabbed momentum following the first media timeout and ran away with a 103-66 exhibition victory before 6,017 fans inside the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum.
The preseason Mountain West Conference favorite Aggies made 61-percent of their field goals on the night and held a 49-32 rebound edge over the NAIA Division II Coyotes.
The Yotes opened the game with a
Talon Pinckney-to-
Nate Bruneel alley-oop dunk, with a bucket from
Ricardo Time and a Pinckney 3-pointer in the first four minutes, helping the visitors build a 9-4 lead – with a
Derek Wadsworth 3-pointer giving C of I their final lead of the night at 12-11 with 13:23 left in the half.
USU used their size and strength to answer, as Justin Bean scored six of his 18 points in a 20-2 run to erase the deficit. C of I cut the margin to 38-25 on an
Ivory Miles-Williams triple at in the half, but the Aggies scored the final nine points of the period to lead by 22 at the break.
The Aggies took their largest lead of the night at 75-35 on a Trevin Dorius lay-up, but consecutive treys from
Nathan Burman and
Otto Taylor got C of I with 85-54 with six minutes remaining – but the Yotes would not get closer.
Bruneel led 10 Coyotes who scored in the contest with 12 points, with Taylor and Time each scoring nine and Wadsworth scoring eight points with a team-high six assists. C of I made 31-percent of their field goals and finished 14-of-46 from 3-point range.
Diogo Brito led USU with 19 points, one of five players in double-figures, with Dorius adding 10 points and nine rebounds.
The Yotes will have tomorrow off to prepare for a Friday night exhibition game at Division I Utah Valley.
POSTGAME QUOTES - Head Coach
Colby Blaine - "First thing's first, huge thanks to Craig Smith and the Utah State Aggies, they are first class. Craig's been a friend for a long time, and he runs his program better than anyone in the country. We appreciate them allowing us to come down here. I thought our guys played really hard. I'm really proud of our effort of sticking together as a team, but their length, I think the stat is that they're the second tallest team in the country, and right now we're really small ourselves waiting for a few guys to get back. Their length really disrupted us, so we settled for a lot of 3's tonight because we had to, that was our advantage. I think more than 70 percent of our shots were 3's, and we just weren't able to knock them down. They're well coached. We changed our defense multiple times and they were able to transition with us and just flow to their offense, which was pretty impressive for them in their first game. I'm happy with our guys' effort, and we had 17 assists, we created open shots for ourselves. With our lack of size against them, we just weren't able to rebound and score inside."
