Take three on Bulldogs’ loss at Utah State: finding a New way to attack at offensive end

Fresno State put some pieces together and took a nice forward step, but lost 77-70 in overtime at No. 25 Utah State on Saturday at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum to fall to 2-7, 0-2 in the Mountain West.

The numbers that stand out are the fouls and the foul shots – the Aggies were 31 of 34 at the line while the Bulldogs were 13 of 15, the road team outscored there by 18 points.

“That’s what happens when you’re on the road,” coach Justin Hutson said. “That’s just road basketball, especially with the raucous crowds. That’s just part of college basketball.”

Hutson probably could have said more, but who needs a reprimand from the conference office in the personnel file?

Here are three takes …

Connect five

Utah State was a top-20 team in the nation in offensive efficiency, scoring at 1.106 points per possession, and it put up 77 points.

Those foul shots obviously helped.

But Utah State hit just 35% of its shots, its lowest in 32 games since going 16 of 61 (26.2%) in a loss at Nevada on Jan. 2, 2019.

The Aggies finished at a season-low 0.975 points per possession and at the under-8-minute timeout in the second half was at 0.786.

“We’re learning,” Hutson said. “Our guys, every day is new. I thought we broke down in a couple of games defensively, against Vegas in the second half and at Northridge a little bit in the second half.

“We spent a lot of time again on the same principles, playing harder and trying to be more connected and I thought we played pretty good defense tonight. We still have room for improvement, but I thought we showed some grit in this tough environment.”

It was the Bulldogs’ best defensive effort this season outside of a rout of Division II Cal State San Bernardino, and included four blocked shots by Nate Grimes including the 100th of his career.

The Aggies went through some severe droughts without making a shot – there was a 1-of-16 stretch, which led to a 4-of-27.

“Just being together,” guard New Williams said. “We talk about it a lot with Coach. He says, ‘Be connected …’ There are five guys on the floor. We don’t want to be five individuals, we want to be one unit.

“That was the big focus for us in this game, just being connected on the floor and making sure that we do everything that we need to do. If something breaks down, then we have each other’s back.”

The atmosphere, the fouls that were and weren’t called made it a tough environment. But the Bulldogs, who have had a tendency to lose focus, stayed connected much of the game, certainly much more than they had in a double-overtime loss to UNLV to open conference play.

“It was a little difficult, but you just try to play the game as it comes and not put too much focus into any of that stuff,” Williams said.

“That allows everybody to keep a level head on the floor and we knew we needed to have a level head. We didn’t let the atmosphere or any of the calls get to us too much. If something happened, we just had a next-play mentality and got back on defense and continued to try to execute.”

About those fouls …

Fresno State was outscored at the line by 18 points for the first time since the last time it played at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum, Jan. 9 last season.

In that game, Utah State was 21 of 30 at the free throw line and the Bulldogs were just 3 of 6.

The difference is Fresno State won then, 78-77 on a 3-pointer by Braxton Huggins with 5.2 seconds to go, his eighth three in the game.

A new Williams

Williams scored a career-high 26 points, which is promising, as is the way he went about it.

The senior had been almost exclusively a jump shooter this season, taking 86.2% of his shots from the 3-point line.

But against the Aggies he aggressively attacked the rim, making 4 of 5 shots in the paint and when he wasn’t making layups or dunks getting to the foul line where he was a perfect 6 of 6.

Two things about that …

He had not taken five shots inside the 3-point line all season, total. And, never in his career had he taken five shots inside three in a game.

“We’ve been trying to get him to be more aggressive, to try to make the right play,” Hutson said. “Don’t overthink it … be more aggressive.”

Williams, who has been dealing with a bad back all season and missed about two weeks of practice, said that he knew he had to try something.

“I think I was 3 for 25 or something coming into this game. I just knew I had to get myself going a different way,” he said. “Just coming out and shooting a bunch of threes wasn’t going to be the way that I was going to get going. I just decided to try something different and attack more.

“I had a lot of opportunities to drive with messed-up switches and guys getting hit on the pick and roll. The opportunities opened up for me.”

Williams did go 4 of 9 from the 3-point line including a bank shot at the end of regulation to tie the score at 61 and send the game into overtime.

But that 3 of 25 wasn’t a joke.

Williams started the season 1 of 18, 12%.

Fresno State might figure out there is life inside the 3-point line. The Bulldogs went into the game leading the nation in 3-point rate by a sizable margin, taking 55.9% of their shots from three against Division I opponents.

They also were tied for 210th in 3-point percentage.