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Utah State knocks off No. 19 San Diego State

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Utah State knocks off No. 19 San Diego State


There was no storming of the court this time after the Aggies knocked off a ranked opponent at the Spectrum. But make no mistake, Tuesday night’s 68-63 win over 19th-ranked San Diego State was absolutely worthy of a celebration. 

“I know we’re not getting ice cream, but they should just give everybody ice cream anyway after this one,” proclaimed USU head coach Danny Sprinkle, referencing the Culver’s promotion that rewards Aggie fans anytime their team scores 80 or more points. 

“I’m obviously super proud of our team the way they responded against a team that was the national runner-up last year, with a lot of players back.”

The Aggies (22-5, 10-4), who were tied for first place in the Mountain West with the Aztecs (20-7, 9-5) coming into the game, had a woeful performance at Colorado State last Saturday. Utah State lost to the Rams by 20 points in Fort Collins after beating then-13th ranked CSU at the Spectrum on Jan. 6.

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Utah State looked like a very different, much more determined team on Tuesday while taking over sole possession for first place and becoming just the third Aggie team ever to beat two or more ranked opponents in the same season. The 1959-60 team beat three teams in the AP Top 25, while the 2006-07 squad beat two ranked opponents. 

“I think a lot of times people hit the panic button on us when things go bad,” noted graduate senior guard Darius Brown II. “But we knew this whole week that if we defended, rebounded and limiting their second-chance points that we’d be fine. 

“I know this team. I know we’re fighters. And I knew we’d fine.”

Brown certainly backed up that confidence by leading all scorers with 25 points in 39 minutes in a winning effort. The Southern California native went 8 of 13 from the field, including 5 of 9 from 3-point range, and delivered some of the biggest plays of the game for the Aggies. 

“Darius is from Pasadena, right up the road from San Diego State, and watched them growing up,” Sprinkle noted. “I’m really proud of his effort, and all the guys. I told them before the game that this was a chance to show how great they are. ‘This is why you came to play in the Mountain West, on national TV against a national runner-up. Go show who you are.’ And they did.”

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The Aggies, who lost at San Diego State, 81-67, on Feb. 3, also got 17 points from Brown’s former Montana State teammate, Great Osobor. The junior forward scored 13 of those points in the second half, while also adding seven rebounds and seven assists. 

Sprinkle definitely enjoyed watching his leading scorer go toe-to-toe in the paint with SDSU’s top scorer Jameson LeDee, who led the Aztecs with 23 points on 8 of 13 shooting. 

“That was like two big hogs, just literally mud wrestling the entire game,” Sprinkle said of the Osobor vs. LeDee matchup. “I mean, those are two of the best bigs in the country going at it for 40 minutes on offense and defense, and it was fun to watch.”

Utah State, which also got 10 points from freshman guard Mason Falslev, ended up shooting 49% as a team for the game, including a 7-for-22 effort from 3-point range. 

San Diego State won the rebounding battle, 34-31, and the Aztecs shot 42.9% for the game. But a 3-of-19 performance from beyond the arc certainly hurt their chances of sweeping the season series from the Aggies. 

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“Darius Brown was sensational. 8 for 13, 5 for 9 from 3, 4 for 4 from the foul line. He played sensational,” SDSU head coach Brian Dutcher said. “And (Great) Osobor does what he does. Solid game. Two-for-two at half. We were doubling when he was passing it out, did a good job moving the ball. But we didn’t make enough timely plays. 

“As uninspired as we looked like we played at times, we just couldn’t get over the hump.”

Utah State opened the game with a confidence-building 6-0 burst as the Aztecs missed their first six shot attempts and didn’t notch their first field goal until nearly four minutes into the contest. San Diego State rebounded to lead by as many as three points midway through the first half, but the Aggies closed out the half with an 8-1 run that left the hosts up 31-26 at halftime.

Brown, who scored the final bucket of the first half, then opened the second half with a 3-pointer that ended up as a five-point play for the Aggies when Isaac Johnson turned a SDSU foul into a layup that left USU suddenly up by 10 points. 

“That was huge,” Sprinkle said of the 5-0 second-half start. “And that was due to an effort play by Fish (Johnson), who was tackled when going to the offensive glass. 

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“We always talk about winning the last four minutes of the first half, and the first four minutes of the second half because a lot of teams lose games in those eight minutes of a game.”

San Diego State eventually ended up trimming USU’s lead down to just one point at 59-58 with just over five minutes left, but an offensive putback by Johnson helped steady the ship and the Aggies ended up never trailing in the second half. 

The biggest shot of the game was delivered by Brown with two minutes left. Working down low, Osobor had his shot attempt come up short, but Falslev flew into the paint to tip the rebound out to Brown on the perimeter. 

“Shout out to Mason for crashing. We were talking about rebounding and Mason came in and crashed and got a tip. I happened to be right in the area and it landed right to me,” Brown recalled. “I saw the shot clock was close to two seconds, so I knew I just had to put the shot up. Luckily when Mason tipped it, I caught it in perfect rhythm.”

Brown knocked down the 3-pointer to stake the Aggies to a 64-58 lead that forced Dutcher into using a timeout. 

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The crowd of 9,233 then weathered a couple of tense minutes that included Osobor blocking away a key shot attempt by LeDee and two clutch free throws by Falslev that all but secured the victory for the Aggies, who now control their own destiny with four games left to play. Utah State has this weekend off before returning to action Feb. 27 at Fresno State.





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Utah Jazz Reacts: Who should the Jazz draft?

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Utah Jazz Reacts: Who should the Jazz draft?


The NBA Draft is less than a week away, and the Utah Jazz have a big decision to make. What’s difficult for the Jazz is that there isn’t an obvious choice between some incredible prospects at the top of the draft: AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, and Cam Boozer. Obviously, everything depends on what the Washington Wizards decide to do with their pick. But with all the smoke screens we’ve seen, it’s not clear who will be available to the Jazz.

That’s where you come in. If you were the Utah Jazz and you had the chance to choose between AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, and Cam Boozer, who would you choose?

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the NBA. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Jazz fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.



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Utah first lady Abby Cox optimistic about legislative moves to strengthen child literacy

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Utah first lady Abby Cox optimistic about legislative moves to strengthen child literacy


SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is no stranger to discourse surrounding early child literacy.

While the Beehive State generally performs higher than other states in terms of proficiency measures, its leaders still recognize — especially post-COVID — that it’s a real issue that demands serious solutions.

A legislative audit released Tuesday said Utah school teachers and administrators should focus enhanced attention not only on third-graders, the traditional benchmark for early literacy, but also on first-graders, where data starts spotting early literacy challenges in young students.

Then, Utah first lady Abby Cox on Wednesday added to that discussion, speaking with Utah education and policy leaders about the need to meet the literacy crisis head-on and ways Utah has worked to do just that.

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“We’re not in the best place that we can be, and we’re a little ahead of the national average; we always have been, but that still isn’t great. We’re in a moment where everybody’s starting to realize this … business community, educators, all of us coming together to realize there’s an issue here,” Cox said.

She mentioned the passage of SB241 during the 2026 legislative session, which committed $25.6 million to literacy coaching, increased the statewide goal to have 80% of third-graders reading at grade-level by 2030 and includes an intervention measure requiring struggling third-graders to repeat the grade — “except in cases of certain good cause exemption.”

“I know we can get 97-plus percent of our kiddos reading on grade level by third grade. We can do this,” Cox said.

She also emphasized the need to get “attention-sucking machines,” AKA cellphones, out of classrooms — something top lawmakers in the state have made strides to emphasize.

July 1 will mark the start of a new Utah law ushered in with the passage of SB69 that essentially places a bell-to-bell ban on cellphones at Utah’s K-12 public schools, unless a school or district opts for a looser policy.

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The latest piece of legislation was built upon a similar bill passed during the 2025 session that set a default policy barring students from using their phones during class time.

Despite those restrictions, many lawmakers and educators argued they didn’t go far enough, which led to SB69.

“I don’t think we all know enough about how wonderful this is going to be,” Cox said, adding that data has shown library book checkouts have skyrocketed in schools that have instituted daylong cellphone ban policies.

“I talked to a principal who, after the first day of going bell-to-bell, walked into his high school lunch room, thinking there was a fight, because there was all this chaos and noise … and it was just (students) communicating with each other, playing cards, bringing little games,” Cox said. “It was just beautiful to see, and I think we’re going to see an incredible resurgence as we implement this statewide.”

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Here’s why Bosnia-Herzegovina fans in Utah are living a ‘dream’ during the World Cup

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Here’s why Bosnia-Herzegovina fans in Utah are living a ‘dream’ during the World Cup


The nation’s soccer team practiced in front of fans this week at Real Salt Lake’s stadium in Sandy.

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Fans cheer as Bosnia-Herzegovina players practice for the World Cup during an open training session at America First Field in Sandy on Monday.

The majority of the Bosnians living in Utah did not leave for the Wasatch Front under favorable circumstances.

The Bosnian War in the mid-1990s brought more than 100,000 refugees to the United States, with thousands settling in Salt Lake City.

Thirty years later, however, a moment of celebration brought thousands of Bosnian-Americans together with the arrival of their country’s soccer team in Utah.

Blue and white jerseys flooded the plaza and stands of Real Salt Lake’s Sandy stadium on Monday to watch Bosnia-Herzegovina’s soccer team, which has made Utah its home base in between World Cup games.

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(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Bosnia-Herzegovina players practice for the World Cup during an open training session at America First Field in Sandy on Monday.

“It was like a dream,” Anel Alagic, who was born in Bosnia but raised in Salt Lake, said. “That we qualified for the World Cup was crazy, but then they told us that the home base would never be here in Salt Lake. It’s surreal.”

The festivities extended beyond the field, as well, with several vendors and volunteers serving Bosnian food and drinks, including its signature coffee from the world’s largest coffee pot, which was made in Bosnia.

The pot is traveling with the national team, heading to Los Angeles on Thursday for a match against Switzerland and then to Seattle for Bosnia’s June 24 match against Qatar.

A dream just to qualify

Bosnia has qualified for the World Cup just twice since declaring its independence in 1992, with the first time coming in Brazil in 2014. This year’s team qualified in dramatic fashion, defeating four-time World Cup champion Italy on penalty kicks.

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The Bosnian fans are not taking their team’s presence in the World Cup for granted, with a viral video showing thousands marching in Toronto before the first game and 40,000 to 50,000 expected to be in attendance in Los Angeles on Thursday.

Two Bosnian restaurants in Salt Lake, Cafe on Main and Old Bridge Cafe, will both be closing their doors on Thursday to make the trek to California in support of their country.

And it’s not just people born in Bosnia jumping on the bandwagon, with Cafe on Main saying several Americans showed up in Bosnia jerseys to watch the opening game at the restaurant last week in a packed house.

“I’ve invited a lot of my co-workers and friends that typically don’t even watch soccer,” Alagic said of Bosnia World Cup fever catching on, thanks to events like the open training session. “I was like, ‘We’re having this event. Show out.’ I’ve seen a lot of people here, so it’s cool.”

Bringing people together

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Fans cheer as Bosnia-Herzegovina players practice for the World Cup during an open training session at America First Field in Sandy on Monday.

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“Because of the war, our community is all over the world,” said RSL goalkeeper coach Mirza Harambasic, who is Bosnian. “It’s especially strong in the United States, and it’s strong here in Salt Lake City. So obviously everyone is so excited, so happy to be here, so happy to support.”

Harambasic was born in Bosnia and, like many others, came to the U.S. in the ‘90s. He helped coordinate Monday’s event and was confident in Salt Lake’s ability to accommodate the soccer needs of a World Cup team.

“When you talk about an environment to be successful, I don’t think there are many better places in the United States,” Harambasic said. “As far as city, lifestyle, training at elevation, and then obviously the facilities that RSL provides.”

With the first two games in Bosnia’s Group B ending in 1-1 draws, the top two spots are still very much up for the taking, giving fans just enough hope that the country can advance beyond the World Cup group stage for the first time in its history.

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