Aggies continue best start ever behind career high from Harris

By Tyler Riggs

Nate Harris gets blocked by Long Beach center Marcel Jackson Saturday night. Harris scored a career-high of 26 points and landed his first double-double. / Photo by John Zsiray

Nate Harris must like setting career highs for scoring each game.

After all, he did it twice last week and again Saturday in Utah State's 84-46 win against Long Beach State in front of a standing-room-only crowd.

Last week Harris stepped into the starting lineup for an injured Spencer Nelson and delivered back-to-back career high games of 22 and 25 points. On Saturday, Harris scored 26 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for his first career double-double.

"Whatever he's doing, I hope he keeps doing it," said Aggie guard Mark Brown (13 points, six assists).

The win extended the Aggies' (17-1, 9-0) streak to 14 games and sent the 49ers (6-12, 4-5) into a fourth-place tie in the Big West standings with UC Irvine.

"We've had a lot of close games," Utah State Head Coach Stew Morrill said. "It's nice to have a comfortable win."

"Comfortable" being the largest margin of victory of the season and having no Aggie play more than 24 minutes.

"Six of our nine wins we've had to come from behind to win," Morrill said.

Not Saturday, however -- at least, not after the first minutes. The Aggies were down 7-0, but used a 13-1 run to gain the lead and not look back. Utah State took a 39-27 lead into the break.

"We know they've been down before, we know they've been in that position before," Brown said of what his team talked about during halftime.

Long Beach had been trailing in past games against UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara before coming back.

A major factor in the Aggies' large margin of victory was their dominance on the boards. Utah State outrebounded the 49ers, 45-20.

"We were getting all kinds of rebounds," Harris said. "That was huge from the beginning."

Morrill said it was fun to see his team rebound so well after feeling it could have done a better job Thursday against Irvine.

Harris started the game along with Nelson and in place of Mike Ahmad. Nelson finished the game with seven points and seven rebounds. Morrill said the protective facemask Nelson wears is still causing him some problems.

"[Harris] probably deserves to start at this point in time," Morrill said. "He's on a roll, very confident and very comfortable, he's just got a great knack around the basket."

The announced attendance was 10,381, the seventh-largest crowd in Spectrum history and the largest since 1983. The seating capacity for the arena is 10,270.

"It helps us so much when we've got a full house," Harris said. "We feed off of it so much."

Utah State continues its four-game home stand at 7:05 p.m. Thursday against the Cal Poly Mustangs and at 4:05 p.m. Saturday in a tilt with the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos.

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