Game Recap

Weber State shoots lights out to hand MSU first Big Sky loss

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Entering Thursday’s matchup in Ogden, Utah, the narrative centered upon the Big Sky Conference’s top scoring team looking to protect its perfect home record against a defensive-minded Bobcat team trying to stay unbeaten in league play.

It didn’t take long for host Weber State to set the tone and lure visiting Montana State into a shootout. And that spelled doom for the Bobcats.

WSU, a team that entered the game averaging 82 points per game, enticed a Bobcat squad that jolted to a 6-0 Big Sky start thanks to a scoring defense allowing 62 points per Big Sky contest, to race up and down the court.

All five of Montana State’s starters scored in double figures led by a career-high 18 points from glue guy Abdul Mohamed and MSU totaled six players with at least 10 points. The Bobcats drilled a season-high 13 3-pointers and shot nearly 50 percent as a team.

But the host Wildcats put on an offensive clinic from start to finish. New-look Weber State saw Isiah Brown, Dontay Bassett and Seikou Sisoho Jawara — all three Division I transfers — score 17 points each to lead six WSU players in double figures. Weber shot 63.3 percent from the floor and ran away with a 96-88 victory in which the home team led for the final 18 minutes.

“It’s a good thing we played good offense,” Weber State 15th-year head coach Randy Rahe said. “That was not our best defense tonight. And I think a lot of that had to do with them.

“Our game plan coming in was to get up and pressure them a little bit and I think we might’ve underestimated how athletic and fast they were. That first half especially, we had a hard time keeping up with them.”

The win is Weber State’s seventh in its last eight games and moves the Wildcats to 5-2 in league play. A squad that features five new starters and a total of seven Division I transfers in its rotation looked like Big Sky contenders in handing MSU its first Big Sky loss.

Montana State entered the game as the last unbeaten team in the league standings while also riding a seven-game winning streak overall. Each represented the longest stretches of consecutive wins by the Bobcats in early 20 years.

“Defensively I wasn’t happy at all,” Montana State head coach Danny Sprinkle said. “We showed up with the wrong mindset. We came in trying to out-score them and that’s as good as we can play offensively. We didn’t give them any resistance. It’s just not good enough (to win games).” 

Weber State senior Isiah Brown, a transfer from Northwestern, was one of three Wildcats who scored 17 points on February 4, 2021 against Montana State/ WSU athletics

The Bobcats and Wildcats went back-and-forth for the game’s opening five minutes, but a 9-0 MSU run capped by an Xavier Bishop 3-pointer put the ‘Cats up 21-12 at the 13:03 mark of the first half. Montana State entered the contest shooting 32 percent from beyond the arc, yet hit 5-of-8 from distance to start the game.

Weber State chipped at Montana State’s early advantage. The Wildcats overtook the Bobcats with 3:36 remaining in the opening period and went ahead by five with two minutes left in the first half. The Bobcats outscored the Wildcats 10-3 to finish the frame ahead. An Mohamed offensive rebound and layup as the buzzer sounded put MSU up 45-43 at halftime.

Mohamed, a graduate transfer from North Texas who entered the game as MSU’s stretch four man who has mostly been the defensive catalyst, played the best offensive game of his Bobcat career. But it wasn’t enough to overcome a Wildcat barrage that saw the home team shoot 67.7 percent in the second half.

Weber hit six of its first eight shot attempts of the second half to build a lead with 18 minutes left. WSU went up by as many as 13 at the 6:14 mark in the second half.

Montana State continued to battle and momentarily cut the deficit to a single possession with one minute remaining behind a Bishop layup. On the ensuing possession Brown, a transfer from Northwestern, nailed his latest jumper to essentially seal the game.

Weber State senior Dontay Bassett, a Florida transfer, gathers against Montana State’s Jubrile Belo/ by WSU athletics

Weber State made 21 of its 31 shots in the contest’s final 20 minutes.The Wildcats finished with a 58-24 edge in points in the paint and controlled the glass, out-rebounding the Bobcats 28-24.

MSU junior center Jubrile Belo led the Bobcats with 17 points, while Bishop and fellow senior guard Amin Adamu each scored 15. Bishop dished out a game-high seven assists.

The two teams return to the Dee Events Center Saturday for the second game of the head-to-head series. The contest is scheduled to begin at 12 p.m.

About Colter Nuanez

Colter Nuanez is the co-founder and senior writer for Skyline Sports. After spending six years in the newspaper industry with stops at the Missoulian, the Ellensburg Daily Record and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the former Washington Newspaper Association Sportswriter of the Year and University of Montana Journalism School graduate ('09) has cultivated a deep passion for sports journalism during his 13-year career covering the Big Sky Conference. In August of 2014, Colter and brother Brooks merged their passions of writing and art to found Skyline Sports.

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