While their fellow students had wrapped up finals before the start of the weekend, the Utah State Aggies had one more test to navigate Saturday afternoon.
It ended up being a history exam with just one question: “What is the only Utah State basketball team to win its first 10 games of the season?”
Thanks to an 88-67 home victory over South Florida, the answer is the 2024-25 version of the Aggies, who are now officially off to the best start in school history at 10-0.
“That’s pretty crazy,” USU guard Mason Falslev, a Cache Valley native, said. “I grew up watching the Aggies, and that’s something I can hold on to forever. To be able to look back and say I was a part of the best start in Utah State history is pretty cool.”
Falslev did his best to add to the historic nature of Saturday’s contest at the Spectrum, coming up just short of recording a triple-double. The sophomore totaled 27 points, nine rebounds and nine assists in 39 minutes.
The Sky View High product nearly came out of the game with the outcome decided with just under a minute left, but USU head coach Jerrod Calhoun ended up leaving Falslev in to make a run at the fourth triple-double in school history.
“I’m a player’s coach and I believe in rewarding hard work, and Mason had 27, nine and nine,” Calhoun explained. “I was about to take him out, but the kid’s a beast. He’s a warrior.”
Falslev didn’t end up adding to his stat line in the final moments of the game, but he said he was grateful for the opportunity to become the first Aggie since Jon Judkins in 1988 to record a triple-double.
Shaler Halimon notched the first two triple-doubles in the late ‘60s, while former USU guard Rollie Worster also came close in 2021, totaling 19 points, nine rebounds and nine assists in a win at UNLV.
“I appreciate the coaches and my team for being so awesome and supporting me,” said Falslev, who knocked down three 3-pointers in the first half.
“... I didn’t know I was that close until the last media timeout with less than four minutes left. (Freshman guard) Jaxon Smith came up to me and said, ‘Dude, you have eight and eight.’ I didn’t think I had that many rebounds.”
Falslev’s nine assists against the Bulls (5-5) are a career-high, but he was hardly the only Aggie unleashing pinpoint passes. Senior point guard Drake Allen totaled seven assists against one turnover, and Utah State totaled 27 assists on 32 field goals.
In fact, until Allen scored on a baseline drive with 48 seconds left in the game, the Aggies had notched 16 assists on 16 fields goals in the second half.
“We just threw the ball ahead,” Calhoun said. “We did a really, really good job of just looking for one another. When we got the team together, we just talked about ‘We over me’ and just finding ways to win.”
The Aggies shot an even 50% for the game, but were a much more efficient 60.7% from the floor in the second half despite going 1 for 10 from 3-point range.
Utah State barely won the rebound battle, 32-31, but came up with 22 turnovers against the Bulls, which led to 29 points. The home team also went 18 for 21 from the free-throw line.
Graduate guard Ian Martinez, the top free-throw shooter in the Mountain West, went 6 for 6 from the line, helping offset a rough shooting night otherwise (4 for 12 from the field, 1 for 6 from 3-point range) for the conference’s leading scorer.
Martinez still ended up with 15 points, while the 5-spot came up big for the Aggies. Senior big man Aubin Gateretse and sophomore forward Karson Templin totaled 23 points and 12 rebounds while connecting on 9 of 13 field goal attempts.
“I thought Aubin and Karson Templin did a great job,” Calhoun said. “Karson has been incredible for us, and Aubin had a great game tonight. I was really, really proud of him, and happy for him. We challenged him before the game. I said, ‘These guys are physical.’”
The key part of that challenge was trying to neutralize South Florida’s Jamille Reynolds, who came into Saturday’s game averaging 11.3 points and 8.6 rebounds per contest.
The 6-foot-11, 285-pound senior played just 12 minutes in the first half due to foul trouble and struggled with USU’s double teams the whole game, committing five turnovers on his way to scoring just six points.
South Florida’s leading scorer, sophomore guard Jayden Reid, also struggled offensively, scoring only nine points, nearly five below his season average.
“They’re as good as advertised,” USF interim head coach Ben Fletcher said of the Aggies. “I thought at the end of the first half, we had figured some things out. They went into that locker room and made adjustments against how they were guarding some of our actions, and man, they did a heck of a job in the second half of giving us different looks.”
Fletcher, who took over the helm at South Florida after head coach Amir Abdur-Rahim died on Oct. 24 during a surgical procedure, also lamented his team’s ball handling against a Utah State team that played only matchup zone.
“It’s the turnovers, because I felt like the majority of them — we had 22 which is way too many — were self-inflicted again,” Fletcher said. “At some point, we’ve got to make a collective effort to not have those because I feel like if you take those away, we give ourselves a better chance.”
The Bulls actually shot the ball much better in the second half (54.2%) but lost ground against the Aggies after going on an 8-0 run at the end of the first half to go into intermission trailing 37-31.
It didn’t help that Utah State, thanks to back-to-back steals, scored twice to start the second half before South Florida managed to get a shot off.
The visitors still managed to hang around, though, and were trailing by just eight points before the Aggies put together a 10-0 run to pull away for a 60-42 lead with under 12 minutes remaining.
Utah State ended up leading by as many as 21 points down the stretch to improve to 7-0 at home this season.
The Aggies return to the Spectrum next Tuesday night when they host UC San Diego. Utah State, which played neutral-court games in Kansas City and Orlando in November, won’t play their first road game until taking on Saint Mary’s on Dec. 22.