With second-half adjustments, Bulldogs zone in and win 63-53 at Boise State

Braxton Huggins was scoreless at halftime. Deshon Taylor, also scoreless at the half. The Fresno State Bulldogs lost guard Noah Blackwell with a right hamstring injury, struggled mightily to consistently attack Boise State and its 2-3 zone and for the longest time didn’t have much of anything working to their favor.

But they still managed to take down the Broncos, righting themselves in the second half and securing a 63-53 basketball victory on Saturday at Taco Bell Arena.

The key for the Bulldogs: guard New Williams, who headed into the game was struggling with his shot, and an adjustment by coach Justin Hutson that put Taylor on the wing in the second half and in better position to attack the Broncos’ zone.

“I thought the zone caught us a little by surprise and it shouldn’t have,” Hutson said. “We practiced on it probably four days this week because we had a lot of time off and people are scared to zone us because of the way we shoot it.

“But I think there’s nothing like game experience, right? We made a couple of tweaks at halftime and the guys settled down and made some big shots.”

Williams, 0 for his last 13 when one finally went down, had a few of them.

“My teammates, coaches, everybody has been on my side,” he said. “Even when I wasn’t hitting shots I still stuck with it and made sure that I did everything coach asked me to do. I made sure I got myself going on the defensive end first and that sparked my offense.”

His first make since the second half of the Bulldogs’ Jan. 5 victory over Colorado State at the Save Mart Center was a 3-pointer with 4:01 remaining in the first half that put Fresno State up 18-16. But they only fizzled down the stretch, and had nowhere to go but up after a first half in which they struggled against that zone, hitting only 34.5 percent of their shots including just 13.3 percent from the 3-point line.

That’s 2 of 15 for a team that went in leading the conference in 3-point field goal percentage at 38.4, had 10 or more threes in all four of its Mountain West games and 10 or more five times over the past six games.

Huggins and Taylor take 15.1 and 11.3 shots per game, average 19.3 and 16.8 points. That’s a lot of offense, and they were a combined 0 of 5. The Bulldogs also turned it over eight times.

“The adjustment was getting me out of the middle (of the zone),” said Taylor, who finished with 15 points and four assists, all coming in the second half. “They put me on the wings so I could get into the middle and that’s what I did.”

When Taylor and Fresno State started to attack the gaps in the Boise State zone, the Bulldogs started to gain and then get away from the Broncos to get to 13-4 and 4-1 in the Mountain West; they have won their first three conference road games for the first time since 2003-04.

Williams knocked down a 3-pointer to get them going. But the Bulldogs, with Blackwell down and Huggins held to 2 of 7 shooting and six points, needed more than those threes from Williams and they got it.

“We talk a lot about, ‘Just lose yourself in the game,’“ Hutson said. “Just play hard defense. Get a deflection. Drive and kick it to somebody. Don’t over stress about just one part of your game because now you’re going to paralyze yourself.

“But all night he was picking up and pressuring. He played great defense. He got into the lane a few times. When that ball came back to him it was like riding a bike. He just stepped in and shot it and knocked it down.”

This story was originally published January 19, 2019 at 5:56 PM.