Utah State cools off Wyoming star Adams, rolls to win
Wyoming’s Josh Adams came to Las Vegas as the Mountain West scoring champion, but against Utah State on Wednesday, he made 4 of 17 shots.
Instead, Shane Rector scored 24 points and Chris Smith 20 as No. 9 seed Utah State opened the conference basketball tournament with an 88-70 victory over the Cowboys at the Thomas & Mack Center.
“Coming in, we were really confident and knew what we had to do to get the win,” Rector said. “And we did that tonight. We got off to a strong start, and we didn’t really let up.”
The Aggies (16-14), who play No. 1 San Diego State (23-8) at noon today, became the first team seeded ninth or worse to win a game in the Mountain West tournament.
Jason McManamen led Wyoming (14-18) with 23 points. Adams scored 18.
Colorado State 80, San Jose State 61 — Antwan Scott and Joe De Ciman each scored 17 points to lead the sixth-seeded Rams to the victory.
Colorado State (17-15) next plays No. 3 Boise State (20-11) at 8:30 p.m. today in the quarterfinals. No. 11 San Jose State finished 9-22.
The Rams took charge early, going into halftime with a 43-24 lead.
“We won this game with our two practices before we played,” Colorado State coach Larry Eustachy said. “I knew we were sitting on a win just because of how in tune we were, how focused we were. It’s a very unselfish team, but we were even more unselfish than normal. So you usually can tell, and I felt pretty comfortable. And they missed shots, but we had a lot to do with it.”
WOMEN
Colorado State advanced to the final of the Mountain West tournament with a 60-42 victory over New Mexico.
Elin Gustavsson had 18 points for the Rams, Keyora Wharry scored 15 and Jamie Patrick 12.
No. 22 Colorado State (29-1) has won 27 consecutive games.
The last time the Rams were in the conference championship game was 2014, when they fell to Fresno State 77-68.
New Mexico finished 17-13.
The championship game will be at noon Friday at the Thomas & Mack Center.
Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow him on Twitter: @markanderson65