Weber State men’s basketball uses bench in 82-36 win; Petty scores 9 for Maine Fort Kent
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- Weber State forward Dontay Bassett (21) rises to shoot over defenders from Maine Fort Kent on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, at the Dee Events Center in Ogden.
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- Weber State guard JJ Overton (24) flies in for a layup against Maine Fort Kent’s Jordan Guerrero on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, at the Dee Events Center in Ogden.
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- Weber State guard Zahir Porter dunks the ball against Maine Fort Kent on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, at the Dee Events Center in Ogden.
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- Weber State guar KJ Cunningham drives past Maine Fort Kent’s Brandon Ruaro (13) on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, at the Dee Events Center in Ogden.
OGDEN — Caught in a stretch of four games against top-100 teams, Weber State men’s basketball paused for a scrimmage-like matchup against Maine Fort Kent and largely got what they wanted out of the day.
Fifteen Wildcats took the court, only one player (KJ Cunningham) played more than 19 minutes, senior big man Dontay Bassett made his season debut and led his team in scoring, and Weber State won 82-36 on Saturday afternoon at the Dee Events Center.
“We needed a game … to try to get guys some more playing time, get guys on the floor who haven’t had a chance to play,” WSU head coach Randy Rahe said. “Some of those guys who haven’t had their opportunity to play yet got to go out there and play, and get a taste of it, which they deserve.
“We’ve got all these guys who work their butts off in practice every day, they’re all about team, and some of these guys get their chance to play. I’m happy we can get those guys out there and get them some minutes. So from that standpoint, it’s exactly what we wanted to get out of this game.”
Weber State (9-1) held the non-NCAA team from the northern border of Maine to six points in the first 19 minutes. Those points came on two 3-pointers from Bengals guard Micah Petty, a South Weber native and graduate of Layton Christian Academy who had a contingent of 30-something supporters in the front rows behind the UMFK bench.
Petty led UMFK with nine points and grabbed six rebounds.
Bassett scored nine points in a stretch of less than five minutes late in the half. He finished with 13 points and five rebounds in 12 minutes. After being a regular part of last season’s rotation, Bassett made his first appearance after working through some health and conditioning roadblocks from the offseason.
“It’s a basketball game and you’ve got to produce no matter what the competition level is,” Rahe said. “He just went out there and played the game, was able to get some stuff done, his teammates found him … from that standpoint, you can take quite a bit from it. He checked in, didn’t matter the competition and he produced. That was good.”
Weber State led 36-8 at halftime with a new starting lineup after using the same starting five in the first nine games. Michal Kozak started at center instead of Cody Carlson and totaled seven points and three rebounds. Carlson had six points and five rebounds.
“We just wanted to do that to get Cody off the bench, maybe get him going a little bit more,” Rahe said. “If we feel like they can play better, then maybe bring them off the bench and they see the game differently … and Michal’s been playing good, he’s been practicing better. We’re looking at that position a little bit and still trying to figure it out.”
There wasn’t one lineup that took the floor Saturday that had played together before. To get everyone playing time, Carlson shared the floor with freshman center Alex Tew, and Bassett shared rotations with junior big man David Nzekwesi, despite this WSU team typically playing only one big man at a time. Some lineup oddities included Dyson Koehler playing the two-guard and Donnie Kupsas at the three-position for a time.
“We just go into different sets and adjust off of that,” junior guard Zahir Porter said. “It’s good playing with different lineups because you never know how a game’s going to go, who’s going to get in foul trouble, what’s going to happen, so it’s good to mix up those five and see how we play with each other.”
WSU shot 32 of 42 on 2-pointers, but just 2 of 22 from deep; Porter and Kozak had the two makes.
“We’re just going to get back to how we play, we’re going to end up knocking down shots,” Porter said. “We’re going through one of those things where we just can’t hit shots right now but hopefully it fixes itself soon.”
Porter scored 11 points, and JJ Overton and Koby McEwen each had 10. Dillon Jones grabbed a team-high six rebounds and four others had five rebounds (McEwen, Carlson, Nzekwesi, Bassett).
Next up for Weber State are home games against Utah State (Dec. 15), BYU (Dec. 18) and Fresno State (Dec. 23) to close nonconference play in one of the best three-game stretches of home games at the Dee Events Center — at least the best since facing DePaul, Colorado and Utah State (DePaul and USU were NCAA Tournament teams) in three consecutive games during the 1987-88 season.
