The Colorado State men’s basketball team keeps finding new ways to get into the win column.

The undermanned Rams have shown that they can hang with anyone in the Mountain West Conference over the course of the last two-and-a-half weeks. Winners of five of their last six, the Rams have made their living on the defensive side of the court in their previous two games.

Following their 69-49 rout over UNLV on Saturday afternoon, it looked as if the Rams were going to hold their second consecutive opponent under 50 points as they took on the Utah State Aggies at Moby Arena on Tuesday night.

Unfortunately for the Rams, the Aggies hit the 50-point mark with 1:52 remaining. Nevertheless, Colorado State put on another defensive clinic in their 69-52 win over Utah St.

“Utah State is not bad,” senior guard Gian Clavell said following the win. “They are a really good team.”

Neither Colorado State or Utah State came out of the gate hot, but the Rams warmed up first. Colorado State was able to hold Utah State scoreless for the first 5:33 of the game.

“We came to the game talking each other saying, ‘we gotta start the game playing defense,'” Clavell said. “We don’t care about the offense. As long as we play defense, play the boards, we’ll be fine.”

That’s exactly what the Rams have done in their previous two games.

After holding UNLV to just 30 percent from the floor, Colorado State’s stingy defense was only a little less frugal on Tuesday. The Aggies only shot 35 percent from the floor.

Gian Clavell played a big role in keeping the Aggies’ shooting percentage down. Along with scoring a game-high 24 points, he kept Utah State’s leading scorer Jalen Moore in check. Moore finished the game with 10 points on 4-of-15 shooting from the field, but none of those buckets came against Clavell.

“I don’t know if (Jalen) Moore scored against him,”Colorado State head coach Larry Eustachy said following the win. “I know Emmanuel (Omogbo) switched a couple times and he scored on Emmanuel.”

Guarding the other team’s top-scorer is nothing new to Clavell. He does it on a regular basis.

“It’s crazy,” senior forward Emmanuel Omogbo said. “Gian (Clavell) is playing 39 minutes and he’s guarding the best player on the other team.”

“He takes a lot of pride in taking on the best player if he’s a perimeter guy and stopping him,” Eustachy said.

Along with disrupting shots, the Rams did their best to make sure the Aggies didn’t have the chance to shoot. Colorado State forced 12 turnovers in Tuesday night’s win to add to the 10 they forced on Saturday.

“I thought our effort overall was terrific the whole game from that side,” Eustachy said of his team’s defensive showing. “I thought our effort was terrific. We played a lot of plays right. Overall it was a terrific effort from start to finish.”

With six games remaining in the regular season and first place in the Mountain West still on the table, the Rams couldn’t have picked a better time to start playing lock down defense.

The Rams will have a few days to rest up before taking on Fresno State at Moby Arena on Saturday at 2 p.m., but Eustachy knows that his team’s final six games of the season will be anything but a cakewalk.

“We know what he have Saturday and the last six ahead of us.”