SLIDESHOW: Weber State vs. Utah State basketball (also includes WSU vs. Dixie women's basketball)
OGDEN -- Despite missing 18 3-point attempts, the Weber State Wildcats made enough plays late in their season-opener on Friday night to stay within striking distance of Utah State. Unfortunately for the Wildcats, they never got a chance to pounce.
Utah State held on to win an exciting opener for both teams, 66-60, in front of a crowd of 9,272 fans at the Dee Events Center.
The Wildcats (0-1) made just two of their 20 3-point attempts, and trailed by as many as 15 points early in the second half. Even with the poor long-range shooting, the Wildcats made an exciting run late in the game and came close to catching the Aggies (1-0). Steve Panos hit a pair of free throws with 26 seconds left to pull WSU to within 60-56, but WSU didn't get any closer than that.
"There are going to be nights like that," said WSU guard Damian Lillard. "Just because we have a bad night shooting from 3 that doesn't mean we stop playing. We need to work around it. It's not going to be like that every night."
Lillard scored a game-high 20 points, while Franklin Session finished with 11 for the 'Cats, who had 19 more shots from the field than the Aggies.
"I think we were probably a little overly excited, and you could tell with our shooting," said WSU coach Randy Rahe. "I thought we hurried our shooting a little bit and we're a better shooting team then we showed tonight. But I was proud of our kids. We competed, we kept fighting them and we gave ourselves a chance down the stretch and we just came up short."
Tyler Newbold led USU with 15 points, including a perfect 4-of-4 from the free-throw line. Nate Bendall finished with 13 points while Jared Quayle scored 11 and Brian Green added 10.
"You can see the maturity in their team tonight, just a really seasoned, veteran, mature team," Rahe said. "We've got some younger guys who are trying to find their way, and they will. We'll be a good team."
The Aggies took advantage of their trips to the free-throw line, shooting 20-of-22 including 5-of-6 in the final 47 seconds to seal the win.
Newbold's capped off a 5-0 run on a three-point play with 1:25 left in the first half to give USU a 28-21 halftime lead. The Aggies tried to put the game away by opening the second half on a 12-4 run. Quayle's layup ended the stretch and gave USU a 40-25 lead, which was their biggest advantage of the game.
Facing such a deficit, WSU turned to its defense. The Wildcats forced 17 turnovers while only committing 11, and it was that type of defensive effort that gave the Wildcats the opportunity to get back in the game late in the second half.
"Even if we're not scoring and we stop them then we're stable," Lillard said. "If we're not scoring and they are scoring then it's a blowout so we knew as long as we played solid on defense and played hard then we'd be fine. We just didn't pull it out."
"Give Weber credit," said WSU coach Stew Morrill. "They took us out of a lot of our offense with their defense."
Kyle Bullinger's three-point play with 3:11 remaining ended a 5-0 run by WSU and cut the Aggies' lead to 54-47, which was the first time WSU was within single digits since Green's basket that gave USU a 34-23 lead a little less than five minutes into the second half.
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