Checking in mid-winter break

With basketball having the last week and change off, the announcement of Robert Turbin having come and gone and Bobby Wagner's draft status remaining excellent, there hasn't exactly been a whole lot of news to report on here at The Sagebrush Spot.

In regards to the game against Mississippi State coming up Saturday, this can be a good measure of exactly how far the basketball team has come in the past month. They've had some quality practice time to prepare and to get better themselves. Now we see what it's amounted to.

As for the rest of the WAC, Hawaii looked like the team to beat this past week while Nevada was still looking solid. New Mexico State got thoroughly embarrassed at home by New Mexico. So basically, every team we thought would be contending has looked great at times and mediocre at others. Hawaii and Utah State seem to be catching hot streaks right before conference play starts, while NMSU has people wondering if their early part of the season was a fluke.

WAC play starts soon, and these questions will turn into answers. The last preview we get of the Aggies before they officially begin the drive for five is Saturday.

Come next week, The Sagebrush Spot will be back in full-force, and it's going to get reeeeeeeal fun!!!

See you in 2012!!!

Bobby Wagner getting the love from CBS

While Robert Turbin has been grabbing headlines for his decision to go pro, another all-time great has been quietly sneaking up draft boards. Bobby Wagner, the top tackler in both USU and WAC history, is currently projected as the No. 3 best inside linebacker prospect in this year's draft by CBSsports.com.

While many casual football fans might not have heard Wagner's name a whole lot on SportsCenter over the past four years, anybody watching B-Wagz play knows damn well that the folks in Bristol should have been hyping him up like nobody's business. Wagner's tackling ability and instincts are both at an elite level, while his speed and strength are both very above average as well. If nothing else, the guy just makes plays. Anytime you have a guy who is capable of taking over a game defensively like Wagner can, you're going to have a solid football player on your hands.

Some might say that Wagner's size is a concern, but again, if scouts watch film on him, they'll see he plays bigger than he actually is. And let's not forget that there are plenty of guys with marginal size that have turned out to be superstars. Once upon a time scouts were skeptical that Lance Briggs was too small coming out of college at 6'0, 242... Yes, six-time Pro Bowler Lance Briggs, who ended up slipping to the 3rd round of the draft back in 2003.

Much like the case will be with Turbin, a lot of Wagner's draft status will hinge on how well they perform in the combine and team workouts. If Wagner still measures as one of the fastest inside linebackers, seeing him land in the second round is a very real possibility.

This is going to be a story to keep an eye on, as Wagner could really catch a lot of attention and score some quality airtime on ESPN and NFL Network. It'd be an awfully nice way to see arguably the best defensive player in Utah State history carry on his legacy.

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die!!! Turbin is going pro.

Once upon a time, Robert Turbin said in an interview that a big part of the reason he chose to come to Utah State was because he wanted to be the kind of guy who helped turn a program around. There were plenty of other places he could have gone, but despite even the lowest of lows for the USU football around that time, Turbin still came to be an Aggie.

 Five years later, "Mission accomplished" might be the most fitting way to describe the career of No. 6 at Utah State.

In the season prior to Turbin's first year at USU, the football program bottomed out. The Aggies won just one game all season and lost by an average of nearly 28 points per game. There was essentially zero appeal or excitement surrounding the program.

Starting to look golden, showing flashes of greatness and dominating Kent State, 81-62

Not much of a shortage of these kinds of trophies at USU...

My boy Tony Jones over at The Salt Lake Tribune may have already summed up Thursday's game as best as it could be.

"If Kent State went man-to-man, Grim went to work in the paint. If the Golden Flashes went zone, Medlin shot them out of it. Whatever defense they played, Reed flew around and wreaked havoc."

This is the same Tony Jones who was saying not much more than a month ago that Kent State might be USU's toughest home test this season and probably the most likely team to hand USU a loss in the Gossner's tournament. And all of that hype was totally valid after the way Kent State started the year. Opening with a win on the road at West Virginia and coming into this week with their only loss being to a top-50 RPI Cleveland State team, KSU was looking like a team to be feared.

Grim dominates day two at the Gossner's

Day two of the tournament wasn't all that different from day one in a lot of ways. The first game was close, and the second game was essentially dominated by Utah State. This time though, the Aggies didn't do the whole drama-queen thing down the stretch by letting the team they were blowing out back into the game.

This time around, it was mostly the upperclassmen (and Ben Clifford) who led the way in the scoring department. It was the first game since Texas A&M-CC that the two seniors were the top-two scorers on the team.

Morgan Grim came out swinging from the start of the game and didn't slow down at all. St. Peters' defense seemed very much aimed at not letting Preston Medlin light them up like he did UT-Arlington. What they forgot was that leaving Grim to go one-on-one down low is generally not going to end well for them. But even outside of that, Grim was putting himself in the right places at the right times to create scoring chances around the basket, and just as important, his teammates were finding him.

Brockeith Pane had himself a solid game as well, scoring 12 points in only 20 minutes of play. Kind of seems fitting that just one day after mentioning how dangerous this team could be if both Pane and Grim were to get to equaling their output from earlier this year, they go and step up the very next night to lead the way in a blowout.

And for the first time this year, Ag's are on a winning streak!!! USU wins, 73-69

See that rim up there? I just went to town on it... twice!

So, this whole scoring points things is pretty cool, eh? Through the first eight games of this season, USU was averaging 62.6 points scored per game. In the last three... 75.6!!! 

Despite the near epic meltdown by USU down the stretch (Aggies were up by 18 with 3:30 to go), this game was basically in control the whole way for Stew and the crew. Most of this is credit to the 3-point shooting and overall offensive prowess, which was convenient since the defense had what seemed to very much be having and off night. And while it's never encouraging to nearly blow a lead like that in the closing minutes of a game, to still come out with a win and a lesson learned is a positive for a young team.

Deep balls aside, this team is really finding their offensive rhythm, and it's coming from a lot of different places. Danny Berger kept on doing what he's been doing since his redshirt was set on fire, scoring in double-figures for the fourth game in-a-row. Kyisean Reed tied his career-high of 13 points for the FIFTH time, and also had two dunks that incited what had to have easily been the loudest The Spectrum has ever gotten during the Gossner's tournament. Ben Clifford quietly had another solid game too, scoring eight points, grabbing a few rebounds, and making the majority of his shots from the field.

Another ridiculously late basketball post game...

He's starting to just make it look easy

While the majority of USU fans were stuck in the fallout of a crushing loss in the Potato Bowl, the basketball team was happily reminding people that they are rapidly turning into a force to be reckoned with. Seattle was dominated for just about the whole game, ending with a 78-53 final for USU in which the Aggies held Seattle under 30 percent shooting on the night. 

Preston Medlin continued his merciless reign of terror on opposing defenses Saturday, going for 22 points and four rebounds. He also hit 3-of-5 shots from deep to up his 3-point shooting percentage over the last six games to 54.5 percent. He's also shooting just under 82 percent from the free throw line. Really, the stat-sheet has pretty much becomes Pre-Med's bitch since he went 0-fer against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. Not sure if that was something that just set him off or not, but he's been a maniac since then.

Now though, Pre-Med isn't looking like the only star out on the wings with Danny Berger putting up his third straight double-digit scoring game. He was also tied for the team-lead in rebounds and steals, while holding sole possession for the lead in assists Saturday. That's the kind of consistency that no other wing player not named Medlin has showed this year, and one would think that a starting spot is about to open up for Berger.

The Bummer in Boise... Aggies fall, 23-24

With the dust settled on what was one hell of a football season at Utah State, the same theme that held true essentially all year held true yet again... Whoever has the ball in the closing seconds of a close game is going to win. That was the case in nine games this season. Five of them were USU wins, four were losses.

At the end of the day, this season was one hell of a ride. For a lot of teams around the country, 7-6 is nothing to be excited about. But for Utah State, it's progress. It's a sign that all the hype of Gary Andersen resurrecting this football program is no longer just talk. It's real and it's happening.

In the bigger picture of things, Saturday's loss has to have left a lingering hunger with the players and coaches who want to go down as the ones to finally get another bowl victory for Utah State. After suffering all the close losses that this team suffered early this season, the change in their mentality was apparent from halftime of the Hawaii game. Their hunger to win took over and carried them to the most thrilling comeback of the year in one of the toughest places to play in America.

We watched this team learn how to win right before our eyes, and even though Ohio managed to make the plays they needed to make in order to snatch away a victory in Boise, the changes in talent philosophy and mentality are what got this team to Boise in the first place, and those things will carry Utah State to more bowl games in the future under Andersen.

For the game itself, there's not a whole lot I feel like I can say that nobody else saw. Everybody watched it, and based on reactions from people after the game, everybody had similar takes on what eventually cost USU the game. Kudos have to go out to Ohio, who was one of the best teams to take the field against Utah State this year and they showed it.

Like I said though, not much to say that we didn't all see watching the game. Some other things will be addressed when final grades are put out by this very site later in the week. For now, rather than agonize over what could have been like we've been stuck doing so many other seasons, celebrate what this season was and the moments that made it so memorable. Also don't by afraid to look forward to next season with some optimism that doesn't feel like wishful thinking anymore.

Utah State football is back. We'll see you in spring ball.

FOR ALL THE POTATOES!!!! Utah State vs. Ohio

Here we go! Back into the bowl landscape for the first time in nearly a decade-and-a-half. To shed a little context on the rarity of this, the last time USU went bowling, members of this year's USU freshman class were just five years old. Since that last bowl season, the Aggies have had a record of 50-111. Just one other time outside of this season has Utah State won five games in a football season since 1997. It's been dark times that we're climbing out of, but if I had to guess, USU will be out of that hole for a little while now with Gary Andersen running this show.

Now though, history can go out the window. Now it comes down to delivering on the football field. Now it comes down to finishing out this roller coaster of a season the right way.

Checking in on the kids at American Fork

Utah State commits Marcel Davis and Quincy Bair rolled into Alta High School with the rest of the American Fork Cavemen Wednesday night, conveniently about a one minute drive from the current headquarters/bachelor pad of The Sagebrush Spot. So why not go check out the kids in person, right?

While the stats from the game might be less than impressive, don't let them take away from a solid showing on the court in what turned out to be a 57-50 victory.

While I could easily try and tell the story of the game, that would end up mostly talking about Austin Waddoups and his 20-point performance. But since Waddoups isn't signed on to wear an Aggie uniform anytime soon, I'll keep the focus mainly on Davis and Bair... But also include my thoughts on Waddoups at the end, because he showed he's worth mentioning.

This kind of stuff is what makes it all worth it

Saw this video posted by a friend on Facebook and totally got chills from it. I think this is a perfect example of the excitement that can be brought to a school, fan base and community when you finally experience some success after years and years of being down.

For Baylor, things are feeling pretty damn good for them right about now when one of their own won the Heisman Trophy for the first time in school history. This coming in the heat of a rise to power for Baylor after generations of being the perennial doormat of the Big-XII conference.

For Utah State, finally having a bowl game to look forward to, a conference player of the year in Robert Turbin, a superstar of a coach who truly wants to be here and plenty more hope for continual good things in the future, I would hope Aggies everywhere can relate to this video and look forward to a time when we'll have our own moment of glory. Maybe it won't be a Heisman Trophy, or a BCS bowl game or something as major as that, but the thrill of enjoying that moment with everyone who powered through those rough times together with you will make everything worth the ride.

Let's play a little bit of catch up

Admittedly, it's been a slow week over here at The Sagebrush Spot. A big part of that was due to being away from a computer for most of the day of and after the Wichita State game, but also there hasn't been much to talk about with football not playing this past weekend.

So let's catch up a bit, shall we?

1) The Wichita State game

Putting my optimist hat on the rack for a night, I summoned my inner realist and basically prepared myself to absorb the shame of a blowout loss. Then Stew and the boys proceeded to remind me why it's never a good idea to doubt them. Wichita State has only lost two games all season, one coming against a top 15 team and the other on a neutral court in overtime. They also thoroughly demolished UNLV just six days before facing USU. Yes, the same UNLV team that knocked off North Caroline when they were ranked No. 1. And this wasn't an upset hangover for UNLV either, with the Rebels having already played another game after the upset.

So for all those reasons, it's not hard to see why one would be skeptical about USU going on the road in a tough environment and making things any closer than the 19-point loss UNLV suffered out there.

Thorny throws up his deuces

Peace out Steve... We hardly knew ye.

In the words of a crappy song by Senses Fail, "Goodbye Steven... You were so young."

For whatever reason, Steve Thornton has decided to hang it up on his career at USU after just eight games, reportedly in order to move closer to home to play ball. No word on if there is any other reason as to why he came to this decision, but regardless of anything else that might be going on, it's his choice to make. Hopefully none of this has to do with any kind of dire family situation like we saw with Antonio Bumpus.

From a basketball standpoint, this hurts USU in the future. Granted, there are still four other wing players left on the team without Thorny in Preston Medlin, Adam Thoseby, Mitch Bruneel, and Danny Berger. Out of that bunch, Medlin is the only one who has shown solid and consistent play. Of the four young guys, Thornton's best had arguably been better than the best of what each of the other guys had shown so far. The "Pooh 2.0" label looked entirely valid, given Thorny's athletic ability and defensive aggression. Even up to this point, Thornton's career had plenty of other similarities with Williams', in that he started a few games early on, showed flashes of excellence, but got a little inconsistent and spent some hard minutes on the bench.

Play improving, roar restoring. Aggies, 63 - community college that is D-1 for no good reason, 54

Anybody wanna argue against this guy being
USU's best player so far this season?

There just might be something to these team effort things that the Aggies have put together four times now this season. Stew ball has been showing itself more and more lately, which is the sign of a good Aggie team in the making. There's still plenty of times when the youth shows through and guys look lost out on the floor, but if that improves each game, we're going to have ourselves a nice little basketball team here before not too long.

Tonight's game came out of the gate looking like a blowout, but progressed into a battle of streaks throughout the rest of the game, but never enough for UV to grab a lead. Biggest thing with tonight was that the Aggies never allowed UV's go-to guys to make a major impact. Isiah Williams was clearly a guy who could be dangerous if he gets hot and Ben Aird is strong and talented down low. Both of them were pretty handily handled tonight, and when facing a team like UV, chances are they don't have those lightning-in-a-bottle kinds of guys who can step up and have a huge game when their stars fail to produce. That was the case tonight. 

Aird still made a pretty solid impact defensively, holding Morgan Grim to just seven points on 2-of-7 shots, but Grim also didn't quite look like he was back to 100 percent from the ankle/curseofthe2012seniorclass/flu. Grim still got his, and really had a solid game as quiet as his points and rebounds seemed to come. It also would have been nice if he didn't have to put in 34 minutes of work battling an injury, the flu and some wretched curse. But, he's a team-player, and got the job done quite nicely.

Mid-Monday links: 12/5

Between making a bowl game and a little student section controversy, Utah State has been all over the national news lately. Then again, this kind of doesn't feel all that unfamiliar when it comes to basketball being in the news. The fact that football is what everyone is still talking about is what is really impressive, and for that, we say...

• GIVE THE MAN A RAISE!!!!
• Robert Turbin is WAC Offensive Player of the Year. Bobby Wagner gets hosed for Defensive Player of the Year (I blame politics... and Karl Benson, obviously). Tyler Larsen, Phil Gapelu, Tarren Lloyd and Levi Koskan join No. 6 and B-Wagz on the All-WAC teams.
• Utah State vs. Ohio in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.
• Adam Kennedy gets some national love, and really it's about time. The dude is only undefeated as a starter in D-1.
• Tony Jones talks about the bromance between Kennedy and Matt Austin, but completely fails to mention how many mancrushes are held for those two among Aggie fans... I'd also be very curious to know how many random girls have added AFK on Facebook since the Hawaii game.
• Randy Hollis over at the D-news talks about how happy he is to be eating crow with this year's football team. Really a pretty enjoyable read.
• Even though you could make a solid argument he was snubbed from the All-WAC teams (same for McKade Brady), Kyle Gallagher is WAC Defensive Player of the Week.
• Our dear friends at USUstats.com lay down the solid work being done by Preston Medlin and Adam Thoseby from behind the 3-point line this season. Brian Green would be proud.
• Jake Heaps is passing up all the free s*** players get for a bowl game because he apparently can't wait to get the hell out of Provo. This drops BYU to 0-for-2 on No. 1 QB recruits panning out.

Lastly,  this link gets separated from the others because I believe it's that important. Bookmark, subscribe, or whatever you need to do to get yourself reading Parsing The WAC with regularity. Knowledge is power, and there is no better place to keep up with everything going on in the WAC than this site.

The ledge is worth stepping back from

At this point in the year, it seems like Murphy's Law is repeatedly punching the Aggie basketball team in the face. First Antonio Bumpus gets lost to foot problems again, costing USU a JUCO All-American recruit (the last three JUCO All-Americans for USU were Brian Green, Jared Quayle and Gary Wilkinson, for comparison's sake of how well those kinds of guys pan out). Then, Brady Jardine gets hit with a foot injury. Then Kyisean Reed hurts his knee. Then Morgan Grim is sick and hurts his ankle or something...

Basically, the injury bug is fully engaged in F-you mode right now, targeting the Aggies' most experienced players first, leaving a whole lot of young guys to take the floor and find out how to play college basketball without a whole lot of veteran leadership. Unless you're a team of all blue-chip recruits, you're going to struggle, and that's where this team is at right now. At one point in the game Saturday at Pacific, the USU lineup consisted of Preston Medlin, Adam Thoseby, Mitch Bruneel, Ben Clifford and Jordan Stone. That's two sophomores and three freshman for everyone scoring at home, and one of those sophomores is fresh into D-1 ball, so there was a grand total of one year of college basketball experience in that crew, which was mostly just about 1/3rd of a year for everyone who remembers how little Medlin played back in 2009-10 after Brian Green hit his stride.

Old Big West Rival 65, Aggies 57

Lead the team in points, rebounds and assists?
Don't mind if I do.

I feel like with a team this young, so many injuries and with it still being very early in the year, it is totally unfair to say that the wheels have come off on the season. To say this team needs some air in their tires might be a better way to describe things... Maybe some duct tape on the axles too... And some NoS... Either way, the bumps in the road for this team are coming pretty fast and furious.

I could talk plenty about how USU got beat in rebounding tonight, or how they only had five assists all game, or how poorly the team shot tonight... But those aspects are all pretty obvious, and they are telling as to why this team is struggling.

Underneath all the struggles, there are signs of life from these team if you're willing to see them. Things like the Aggies edging out the Tigers in both points in the paint and points off turnovers tonight. Or things like beating them by 20 in second chance points. Or how even despite being down 17 with just more than eight minutes to go, the team kept fighting. The eventually made it as close as a six-point game in the last couple minutes.

Refusing to lose. Good Aggies 24, bad Aggies 21

Once upon a time it seemed like if the game were close in the closing minutes as the 4th quarter, the other team always found a way to get the best of Utah State. It left everyone wondering "what if" at the idea of the Aggies being able to make the big plays to pull out those thrilling victories.

Five wins in a row and a bowl invitation later, THAT'S "what if". In nine games this season decided by a margin of only one score, Utah State has won five of those games. In the other three games that weren't decided by one score, the Aggies have won 2-of-3. For all this team went through early on with the heartbreaking losses, the fact that they never stopped working through all of that toward being the team they knew they could be says everything you need to know.

Spectrum Magic

Top 10 teams = no match for The Spectrum at its best

Spectrum Magic is something that can't really be explained. It's something that you've either experienced it or you haven't, and you don't really know until you see it right in front of you. It's the kind of thing that can make a seemingly impossible win turn into almost a sure thing. And it's the kind of thing that can pick up a team from whatever hole they might be in and carry them back to greatness.

There's only one team that gets the benefit of having The Spectrum on their side though. One team that knows that the best student section in the nation is on their side. One team that can stare down the barrel of defeat and not even flinch when The Spectrum elevates to its capability.

Closing this chapter with clarity

It's rare that Utah State is the biggest topic in the media in Salt Lake, but such has been the case today. And nobody among that bunch has been working harder than my man Tony Jones, doing what he can to get the scoop from every side of the story.

To get the updates on what Scott Barnes told Tony, hit up @TonyAggieville on Twitter and read the bits about Tony's interview with Barnes.

Other people saying it as well or better

It sucks that "The Protest" is the big issue here, but what sucks more is that the administration made it an issue rather than let The Spectrum be.

Since some people here might not read all the same places I do, and since there's some other people who have done a great job putting their thoughts into words on this matter, I figured I'd just share those.

Cause and effect.... and then some.

*EDIT* - This song feels just so damn applicable tonight! 

Since there have been plenty of rumors and misconceptions about what happened Wednesday at The Spectrum with "The Protest", let's clear up most of those, shall we? And when that's done, I'm going to share some of my own thoughts on this matter and some of the opinions that flew around Facebook and Twitter afterward.

First off, the game against Denver was not lost by the lack of students. Denver is a good team that played great and won. It's as simple as that.

We can only go up from here... hopefully. 67-54, Denver

Tough crowd tonight, but when every attempt
at a run is thwarted, it's tough to get going.

There's really not a whole lot that can be said about tonight's game...

Denver won the turnover battle, got more shots and made more shots. As has been the case far too often this year, USU did not rack up many assists. Much of the credit has to go to Denver on that one. Really most of the credit has to go to Denver. They were everything they were hyped up to be. They played solid defense across the board, shot the ball well, kept turnovers low and let their experience carry them.

This game wasn't lost because of the crowd, or officiating, or anything other than Denver was a very very good basketball team who made every big play they had to, controlled the tempo of the game and had an answer to everything USU threw their way.

Denver did what so few before them have done... Denver won in The Spectrum. A 33-game streak is broken and the team is at a new low point for the season. When it comes to Aggie basketball, there's not much lower than you can get than losing in The Spectrum, so the hope is that things can only go up from here.The potential is still very much there, but so is the youth. Right now, without Brady Jardine especially, the veteran leadership is falling almost entirely on the shoulders of Brockeith Pane and Morgan Grim.