The Utah State basketball team travel to Kansas this weekend to play Wichita State in a a much anticipated game. The Aggies will face the Shockers on Saturday, 6:05 p.m. at the Charles Koch Arena.
The Aggies have had success playing Wichita, with an overall record of 6-4 dating back to 1948. USU beat the Shockers last season 68-58 in Logan.
But the Aggies have struggled this year.
USU is 4-4 so far this season and has a very young team. Only three seniors returned from last years team but none were starters and to make matters worse, Brady Jardine, arguably one of the teams best players has an ankle injury and is possibly out for the season.
Though they have struggled this year, the youngsters are no pushovers. They have already defeated a very good Brigham Young University team 69-62.
But Wichita will be tough challenge.
The Shockers are 6-2 and have played some tough teams this season. Teams like University of Nevada, Las Vegas (89-70), who were ranked 20th in the nation at the time.
“Wichita State is a well coached team and have a lot of guys that know how to play ball,” senior guard Brockeith Pane said. “They are big, they play hard and they get after you on defense.”
Senior guards Joe Ragland and Toure’ Murry lead the team in points for the Shockers this season, Ragland with 11.8 points per game and Murry with 13.8.
“They are a good aggressive team that have good players at every position,” Aggie freshman guard Steven Thornton said. “They’re going to be hard to beat.”
The Aggies will have to work hard to contain Ragland and Murry. Ragland had eight three-pointers against UNLV and is a very elusive and aggressive player.
“The strategy is to block out, beat them on the rebounds and play hard tough defense,” Thornton said.
But the Aggies are up for the task come Saturday said Pane.
“To beat them we have to go out and play as hard as we can, run our plays hard and give it all we have,” Pane said. “We have to be ready when we walk in to that gym, cause they will be.”
No comments:
Post a Comment