The sky officially has NOT fallen. Gary staying at USU

Gary Andersen has said he wants to change the culture of Utah State football. That goes above and beyond just going to back-to-back bowl games, beating in-state opponents and winning a WAC championship. Changing the culture means changing the attitude of doom and gloom that some people just cannot resist having toward every good thing we have going for us. It also means helping build things up so that Romney is a packed house week in and week out.

We're seeing it though. And we're going to keep seeing it, because Romney Stadium is still Mr. Andersen's neighborhood!!

We knew his name was going to come up everywhere, and it likely will in the future, but Gary made it official that he's sticking to the culture change.

You've got to love a guy who is this committed to sticking things out with his recruits, his fans, his own kids and plenty of other people who love the hell out of him!

As far as Utah State is concerned, every year that Andersen is here sets up the program that much more for long term success. Whether it's in raising the national profile of Utah State even more, appealing to in-state recruits like we've already been doing, or just developing other coaches who are learning under Andersen to be great head coaches of their own one day, Andersen's presence at USU is monumental.

Thoughts on a Thursday - 11/29

There's been a serious lack of non-postgame content here lately, and to that I apologize. In my own defense, I could never suspend feelings of guilt of doing the Highs, Lows and I Don't Knows for football when we were blowing out teams every week. Without any "Lows", the triforce is broken up and there's no order to things.

So let's just bust out some quick hits on the news of the day! This is Thoughts on a Thursday (rhyming intentional on that one).

AGGIES WIN THE BEEHIVE BOOT
As many people had understood it, this was going to BYU this year because of their win over Weber State. Apparently that doesn't carry the same weight it used to though... Each one of the Aggies, Utes and 40+ women trying to date much younger guys were 1-1 against each other. And whether it was margin of victory that gave USU the nod to victory in this one, or the fact that they have a 10-win season to their name this year, the media voters sent the Beehive Boot to Logan this year. That makes two of the last three years that it's come to Utah State, and I dare say this is going to be much more of a trend than a rarity moving forward.

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLOSION LAST NIGHT
After USU's comeback win at Santa Clara last night, Facebook and Twitter went nuts with posts about the game. With a lot of the more casual/lukewarm fans apparently lacking interest early this year, conveying that kind of excitement all over social media is a nice way to remind them there's still plenty to be excited about.

I've always held the belief that if you want to create a rowdy fan base, that all starts with the die hards. When other people see how much fun the die hards are having and how excited they get about games, eventually they want in on the good times. Some of those people grow into die hards themselves, and some fall away once things go bad. But still, it's the die hards that breed new die hards.

Last night was a thing of beauty!

KYISEAN'S DUNKS
Nice freakin job by the Santa Clara camera crew for managing to somehow miss the bulk of both of Kyisean Reed's monster dunks last night, as well as the play as it happened when Preston Medlin was shooting the game-tying 3-pointer.

THIS ARTICLE ABOUT GARY ANDERSEN...
THIS talks about Gary's plans to stay at USU. People seem to not want to believe it, and maybe that's because in many ways, what Gary has done seems too good to be true. The last line of the article is particularly comforting.


Alright. That's all for today

A rough road, but Aggies win at Santa Clara

Whoa!!! Just whoa!!!

And that's my reaction having only been able to follow the game from ESPN's gamecast on a cell phone while at a concert. I didn't get to see this game, and probably many of you did, so rather than talk you through a game you saw and I didn't, let's share some stories about following a college basketball game on a cell phone while at a rock and roll concert. Hopefully it'll at least be a tiny bit entertaining, since I'm not exactly taking this one too seriously. Plus there's tons of YouTube links, so that will add plenty to it. 

THE RIDE
When the current best band in the entire world (The Wonder Years) wrapped up their set of music, the first score update I got had USU down 30-18. First thought there was more or less, "Ah s***, we're not even going to hang with them in our first road game."

Come to find out later, that deficit wasn't too shabby compared to the 19-4 lead Santa Clara had after six minutes of basketball.

Anyway, throw in a few buckets by Kyisean Reed, some free throws by Slim and a trio of 3-pointers courtesy of Danny Berger and Spencer Butterfield, the Aggies somehow found themselves leading at halftime of this game.

Aggies finish regular season with school-record 10th win

There was one step left in finishing the regular season on a record-setting note for Utah State, and all it took was a win over an Idaho team that is pretty much dead men walking.

The first half opened up a little bit sloppy, leaving a tiny bit of a threat of that letdown that sometimes comes after a big win. The offense was held to a three-and-out on its first possession, then ended USU's second possession with an interception thrown by Chuckie Keeton on the second play.

The defense was getting its job done though, even if they gave up an unsavory amount of yards to Idaho in the first half. Three plays after Keeton threw his first pick, Bojay Filimoeatu got in on pickfest 2012 with an interception of his own, which he broke a handful of tackles to return 48 yards to Idaho's 11-yard line. Three plays later, Kerwynn Williams took a Keeton pass into the end zone for the score.

The defense kept things going, allowing Idaho just one yard before they were forced to punt on the next possession. The offense kept on struggling though, punting again after gaining just 19 yards. But B.J. Larsen got in on the turnovers with an interception of his own, setting up another short scoring drive for the offense, this time with the score coming from Keeton's legs.

Basketball wins free throw contest against Weber State

In keeping with this season's theme of winning ugly, Utah State outlasted Weber State in what seemed to be much more of a free throw contest than a basketball game at times.

USU came out looking about like we've seen them look so far this year offensively. Not the most crisp of things, but able to score on pure talent. Jarred Shaw was at the center of things once again, controlling the paint on both ends of the floor. Dude has established himself quite nicely so far this season, and that's without having the offense feeding him quality looks in the post like it will as these guys learn things better.

As things are, you can tell this team still has a long way to go in learning the offense and really just developing at this level. It's nothing out of the ordinary really, it just takes a bit sometimes, and the more rookies there are, the tougher that process becomes (maybe the same can be said for the crowd?)

Anyway, you could tell for the bulk of the first half that Weber State was the more experienced team, which became especially more obvious because they run such a similar system as we're used to seeing here. For once though, the Aggies got to be the team, who despite being much more raw, was able to capitalize on size and athleticism advantages.

Long story short with the first half: Weber had a slight lead for the bulk of it, but USU overcame sloppy play to keep pace and enter the break tied at 28.

Late Monday links for a top 25 program

Kind of a big weekend, wouldn't you say? Aggies win the WAC, crack the top 25, have a party at the airport and plenty more. Basketball has plenty going on too!

Let's round up what's been going on....

• The Utah State Aggies crack the AP top 25!!! Seriously unreal to think about... Utah State is a top 25 football program.
• Conference realignment is heating up again. The fallout of this round could mean an even better conference situation for Utah State and the Mountain West. I'd personally only care to see two of these three teams come back to the MWC.
• Even Stew Morrill was all kinds of stoked on football winning the WAC. Kraig Williams details that, and more.
• Tony Jones has his recap of Saturday's epic win. He also give some love to Jake Doughty and how far he's come. And don't forget mentioning the records set by Keeton over the weekend.
• Chuckie Keeton is the WAC's Offensive Player of the Week.
• The Front Row Show has an interview with Will Davis, and will have a new show online tomorrow. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out here and subscribe in iTunes.
• Kyle Goon has the details on basketball's 77-68 win over Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
• Basketball's fall signing class gets detailed by USU Athletics, including some comments on Kyle Davis.

WAC CHAMPS!!!!! Aggies beat La Tech in OT

A late arrival and some light rain didn't stop a couple hundred Aggie fans from greeting the 2012 WAC football champions as they got off that plane. Beating BYU in 2010 was incredible. The win over Utah this season brought Romney Stadium to its most epic of levels ever. But this win over Louisiana Tech and this WAC title represent the biggest thing to happen to Utah State football during the incredible rise of this program.

Utah State came out looking primed for a blowout against La Tech on Saturday, scoring on its first offensive play and holding one of the best offenses in the country to only three first half points.

Colby Cameron threw his first interception of the year to Will Davis in the end zone to kill La Tech's last chance at a first half touchdown. Then USU opened up the second half with a short scoring drive to go up 24-3, then recovered a botched ball on the ensuing kickoff which resulted in three more points. With Chuckie Keeton picking apart the Bulldog defense without a shred of mercy, the blowout looked to be on at that point...

But La Tech is in the top 25 for a reason. They're a very good football team, and one capable of scoring a lot of points in a very short span of time, and that's exactly what they did.