OGDEN -- There's a reason Wildcats fans call him "Scott-o-matic."
Junior shooting guard Scott Bamforth was as close to automatic as a shooter can get Tuesday, scoring a career-high 28 points on 7-of-9 shooting from beyond the arc as Weber State got a rare 73-63 win over in-state rival Utah State in front of 9,359 fans at the Dee Events Center.
The Aggies had beaten the Wildcats in 10 of the last 11 meetings, but Weber State (2-0) used the 3-pointer early as its weapon of choice to build a double-digit lead, then fought off Utah State (1-1) as the Aggies closed the gap late.
Bamforth was 5-for-5 from beyond the arc in WSU's season opener and hit his first five 3-point attempts Tuesday to make it 10-for-10 on the year before his first miss.
He was quick to credit teammate Damian Lillard, the Big Sky MVP as a sophomore before missing most of last season with an injury, for drawing USU's attention away.
"When you're playing with Dame, it opens up so much," he said. "He's obviously a great player and everybody knows that. Playing with him, he knows the game and he's a great point guard and it opens a lot of things up. He knows that if I'm out there, I know he's going to kick it so I'm going to try to knock down the open shots and take good shots."
Ironically, Bamforth was 0-for-3 inside the arc.
"I work on those floaters all the time, so hopefully, they'll start falling," he said.
Everything else was.
Starting with Bamforth's first 3, eight of WSU's next 10 field goals made were 3-pointers as the Wildcats built a 17-point first-half lead and held a 42-27 advantage at the break.
Lillard added 17 points and four assists, senior forward Kyle Bullinger had eight points and 13 rebounds and Byron Fulton added 10 points off the bench as Weber State hit 8-of-12 3-point tries in the first half (66.7 percent) and shot 52.2 percent from the field overall. The Wildcats held USU to 35.7 percent shooting in the first half.
"It's natural for the home team to bounce around a little bit more," Lillard said. "Our crowd was loud and we were just energized."
Senior forward Morgan Grim led Utah State with 19 points and seven rebounds, senior point guard Brockeith Pane added 14 and senior forward Brady Jardine pulled down 14 rebounds to go with nine points.
The game was billed as a showdown between the top two point guards in the state, and Lillard and Pane treated it with that intensity -- even ending up with double technicals after the final horn after Pane flipped the ball toward Lillard.
Lillard scored 25 in WSU's season opener last Friday, and Pane, the media's choice for WAC preseason player of the year, was coming off a 21-point performance as Utah State handed another in-state rival, BYU, a loss the same day.
"We knew Utah State would be a real test. We haven't beaten them since I've been here," Lillard said. "We just wanted to come out and make a point.
"We got up on them and we just wanted to step on them and that's what we did."
The Wildcats was up by as many as 18 in the second half and answered with 3s a couple of times as the Aggies tried to reduce the lead to single digits, but Utah State finally got there.
Jardine had a monster put-back dunk off of a 3-point miss with 2:21 to go to make it 67-61, but the Wildcats made stops and got the big rebounds they needed to closed it out from the line.
"Games like this really make your team better," Weber State coach Randy Rahe said. "When you play against Coach Morrill's teams, No. 1, you know, it's going to be a grind it out affair."
Morrill, who coached 13 seasons with Rahe as his assistant at Colorado State and Utah State, gave full credit to Weber State.
"Best Big Sky team I've seen in awhile," Morrill said. "I was in that league for longer than most of you probably know; I was in that league as a player (and) as a coach at Gonzaga, then Montana."
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