Fresno State could not get its momentum going. On a night when Utah State committed a season-high 20 turnovers, the basketball Bulldogs failed to capitalize.<\/p>\n
The best the Bulldogs could do was put together a singular six-point run in the second half, falling to the Aggies 72-63 Tuesday night at the Save Mart Center in their Mountain West home opener. Meanwhile, Utah State put together several runs of seven points or more.<\/p>\n
The Aggies improved to 11-1 overall and 2-0 in the Mountain West. The Bulldogs fell to 6-7, 0-2, and lost their fifth game in a row.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we took advantage of the turnovers, I\u2019d be smiling,\u201d Fresno State head coach Vance Walberg said.<\/p>\n
Fighting a double-digit deficit for much of the second half, Fresno State closed within seven as late as 1:11 to go. The ball did not bounce their way. Late in the game, Utah State\u2019s MJ Collins, the MWC\u2019s leading scorer, missed a dunk. The ball bounced high in the air and into the outstretched arms of Karson Templin \u2014 the blond-haired, headband-wearing 6-foot-9 forward.<\/p>\n
Five missed free throws in a row by the Aggies during the final minute gave the Red Wave a glimmer of hope \u2014 and a free chicken sandwich at Chick-fil-A. However, Fresno State missed its final three field-goal attempts in the final minute.<\/p>\n
It did not help that Utah State shot 47% from the field compared to the Bulldogs\u2019 34%. Utah State also won the rebounding battle, 41-34.<\/p>\n
Heidbreder Leads Bulldogs With 21 Points<\/p>\n
Jake Heidbreder started slowly, scoring 15 of his Bulldogs-leading 21 points in the second half. He entered the night as the Mountain West\u2019s third-leading scorer. Wilson Jacques recorded a double-double with 15 points and 12 rebounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s pretty darn good, to be honest with you. And hopefully, he\u2019ll keep doing that,\u201d Walberg said of Jacques.<\/p>\n
Walberg was impressed with Bastien Rieber coming off the bench. Rieber scored 12 points and went 3-for-4 from the free throw line.<\/p>\n
\u201cBastien put the pressure on me to play him. You watch him in practice, he just goes hard and hard and hard. He drew nine fouls tonight. He keeps doing that, he\u2019s going to play more,\u201d Walberg said.<\/p>\n
Collins led the Aggies with 18 points.<\/p>\n
Strong Start, Struggling Since<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs returned to the court after a 10-day holiday layoff. Fresno State fell 84-72 at UNLV on Dec. 20. In that game, after falling behind by 16 in the first half, the Bulldogs took a two-point halftime lead. The team led as late as 8:22 remaining but succumbed to the Runnin\u2019 Rebels.<\/p>\n
Fresno State opened the season with a 5-2 homestand against mid-majors. The Bulldogs followed with an impressive 76-53 blowout of Pepperdine on national television in a neutral-site game in Palm Desert.<\/p>\n
Fresno State returns to conference action Saturday, Jan. 3, against Nevada at 4 p.m. at the Save Mart Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresno State could not get its momentum going. On a night when Utah State committed a season-high 20…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":{"0":"post-115140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}