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Aggies sleepwalk, then wake up to beat Montana State, 60-55 By
Doug Layne Practice makes perfect, and Utah State is not perfect. "We didn't practice well yesterday," the Aggies' Tony Brown said. "We got to get better practice habits. We are inconsistent." Their weak practices may have had an effect at game time Tuesday. The Aggies, who defeated BYU three nights previous in the Spectrum, did not look like the same team that came out to play against a weaker Montana State. Behind Desmond Penigar's 14 points and Brown's 13, USU played just well enough to win, 60-55. "We're very inconsistent," USU Coach Stew Morrill said. "We can play good basketball some nights. Your good when you play consistent." It would not be one of those nights that Utah State came out to play. In fact the Aggies were out-rebounded, turned over the ball more and were outplayed physically in the first half. With less then two minutes to go in the half, the Aggies found themselves down by 10, but back-to-back three pointers erased the Bobcats' lead and brought USU back to within four. That may have saved the game for USU. "We had a hard time getting the ball where we wanted it," Morrill said. But luckily for Utah State, there are two halves in the game and they would come out and outplay Montana State. "We have limitations. We did some good things in the second half. We out rebounded them, played more physically and turned over the ball less," Morrill said. It would take USU until just over seven minutes remaining the second half to take the lead for good. Penigar, who found himself in foul trouble early in the game, came off the bench to give the Aggies the lead for good as he nailed a jumper from 15 feet out. "We had to hang in there and pull it out," senior forward/center Jeremy Vague said. The Aggies would take their biggest lead of seven with just under a minute remaining and got a scare as the Bobcats refused to give up and cut the lead to two points with just under a half a minute remaining in the game. The Aggies held on to go 5-0. The Aggies now travel to Ogden to play a much better team from the Big Sky Conference, Weber State. The Wildcats are much improved from a year a go and had three huge victories against Wisconsin, Colorado State and LSU last week in Hawaii.
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