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Devastating news out of Logan today, the Utah State Men's basketball team announced that Pre-Season WAC Player of the year, Preston Medlin, would be out 6-8 weeks with a broken wrist, suffered in Thursday's game at New Mexico State. If that wasn't bad enough, it was also announced that Senior Forward Kyisean Reed, tore his ACL in the same game, and he would be out for the rest of the season.
We expect our players to step up and compete, as we have a lot of season left.
–Stew Morrill
Things look drastically different for the Aggies from a week ago. Last Monday, Utah State was riding a 13 game win streak, first place in the WAC, with a chance to make a statement on the road against 2 of the WAC's top teams. Now, sitting in fourth place, on the losing end of 2 blowouts, and down 2 of their best players with Louisiana Tech (16-3, 7-0) coming to the Spectrum on Saturday; things are not looking good for the Aggies.
"First and foremost is our concern for Kyisean and Preston. This is as tough as it gets and we hurt for them first and our team second," coach Stew Morrill said. "We expect our players to step up and compete, as we have a lot of season left."
Losing both Reed and Medlin is tough, especially Medlin. Since WAC play started, Medlin had scored 20+ points in 4 out of 6 games; shooting 49 percent from the field, including 40 percent from 3. He was the team's option when nothing was going right. He rallied the team back on the road against Santa Clara; hitting a game tying 3 as time expired, forcing overtime where the Aggies came out victorious. Then on January 5th, with Idaho in town, Medlin's 3 point shot capped off an 8-0 run to force overtime. Medlin then scored 9 points in OT to give the Aggies the win.
Look for junior transfer, Marvin Jean, to get most of Medlin's minutes. Jean had a career high 14 points on Saturday against Denver, including going 4-6 from 3. Jean was averaging about 15 minutes per game up until this point and scoring 4.1 PPG, including 47 percent from 3 (16-34). The Aggies don't have a lot of depth at the 2-3 position right now because of Quincy Bair and Riley Bradshaw leaving the program earlier this season.
As for replacing Reed, the Aggies do have some depth to work with;. Ben Clifford, Jordan Stone, and Matt Lopez have been playing significant minutes for the Aggies this season. Clifford got the start on Saturday and expect him to get the majority of the starts moving forward. The sophomore from Bingham High School is averaging 2.5 PPG and 2 RPG in 12 minutes a game this season.
