QUOTES – Utah State 85, New Mexico State 58

Utah State coach Ryan Odom – “Obviously a great win for us. We beat an excellent New Mexico State team. It wasn’t their day today and I think our team had a lot to do with that. This guy here (guard Rylan Jones) was in control of the game in a lot of ways, obviously from an offensive perspective and a defensive perspective. Our guys set the tone early. They were determined to play smart and tough and meet their physicality. If we’re not willing to put our bodies in there and be up for the fight, it’s going to be a long night for us. The biggest thing early in the season is we have an opportunity to play for a championship. When you have that quick of a turnaround … we were all tired leaving the arena last night. That was a tough thing, but you can’t make excuses. You have to take what the next thing is in front of you and react to it.”

Utah State guard Rylan Jones – “We executed our game plan and wanted to play smart and tough, which we did from the tip.” (On teammate Justin Bean): “Bean’s a special player and I hope he goes for 33 and 16 every night because that would be nice for the rest of us. We’re a well-rounded team, our starting five are five guys who can shoot, pass and dribble so that’s always a matchup for opponents. We love each other, we’ve had fun together, we’ve been on the road for I don’t know how many days and we just bonded even more. They wanted to try to take away Bean, but he was facilitating, and we were making our shots. We can do that.”

New Mexico State coach Chris Jans – “Not much to say. That was a good old-fashioned taken-to-the-woodshed type of game, and we were on the wrong side of it. A lot of credit to Coach Odom, his staff. They were ready to go. We made the first basket of the game, and it went south in a hurry. Just very disappointed by our mental approach. I thought we were ready, obviously we weren’t. That’s on me. I’ve been saying it for a while that we’re going to hit in the face, we’re going to fall down. I didn’t realize it was going to be this hard of a fall. We’re pretty scratched and bruised basketball team. The next 48 hours will be crucial and critical to how we move forward and how we react and process what we just went through. I just don’t remember being beat like at halftime. It was a pretty depressing feeling to be honest and it’s NOT one that I’d like to revisit soon.”