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.

Other good Aggie teams have started slow

As far as expectations go, they need to be kept realistic. This team can still be very good, but it's going to be a bit before they get there. It's only been four years since the last time USU was 3-4 after seven games in a season, and that team had three eventual WAC Players of the Year on its roster (Carroll, Wilkinson, Wesley), USU's all-time scoring leader (Carroll), two future all-WAC Defensive team members (Pooh Williams, Tyler Newbold), a guy who set the USU single season record for assists (Kris Clark), and probably the best reserve big man not named Brady Jardine that USU has had in the last five years (Steve Ducharme). They also had nobody miss any games with injury. That team still managed to start the year 3-4, including back-to-back blowout losses on the road to Big West teams, both of which were by much wider margins than what the Aggies lost by Saturday at Pacific.

Also, what do early season losses to the likes of Jackson State, Middle Tennessee State and IPFW all have in common??? Each of those Aggie teams made it to the NCAA Tournament. Sure, that 2008 team with all the bad early losses didn't make the big dance, but they were young, and that youth eventually put together three straight NCAA Tournament teams and two separate 30-win seasons.

Silver linings are there if you know where to look... Or we can just call this a ridiculous statistical breakdown.

This team, believe it or not, has been fairly solid in several defensive categories. No, they're not the defensive team that we saw last year, or even close to it, but no USU team really has been in quite some time. Through seven games though, opponents are only hitting on 41 percent of shots, and opponent field goal percentage is something valued pretty highly by the coaching staff. Since the 2001-02 season, only three USU teams have held opponents to below 41 percent shooting (2005, 2010, 2011). Yes, this year's Aggies are currently holding opponents to lower shooting percentages than even the 2008-09 team, which in my opinion, is the best USU team in the past 10 years.

This year's team is also holding teams to just 31.3 percent from behind the 3-point line, second best to the 2010-11 team of the last decade. Granted it's early on, but one would hope that as the team progresses they'll be able to at least come close to maintaining those numbers.

On the flip side of all that though, USU's opponents are making 74.3 percent of their field goal attempts this year. No Aggie team in the last decade has had opponents shoot better from the charity stripe, and outside of the 74.2 percent opponents shot against USU in 2008-09, no other season is even close to those two. Of the 449 points scored against USU so far this season, 113 have come from the free throw line (25.2 percent). That percentage blows any other season out of the water, and in turn is killing the Aggies in points allowed per possession this season.

On the not so silver lining part of things, the 43.1 shooting percentage offensively is the worst of any Aggie team in a decade by a really really large margin.

What happens with young wing players all coming in at once...

Going back to 2008 again, that year there were three new players on the wings battling for time alongside an experienced shooting guard who was playing 35 minutes or so a game (back then that guy was Carroll, this year it's Medlin). The newbies that year were Pooh Williams, Tyler Newbold and junior college transfer DeUndrae Spraggins. Through seven games that year, the highest single-game scoring output by any of them was eight points, done once each by both Williams and Spraggins. Nine different times, they put up individual totals of zero points.

For this year's trio of n00bs of Steve Thornton, Adam Thoseby and Mitch Bruneel (oddly fitting the same bill of a prop 48 player, skinny white guy who can shoot and junior college transfer). Through seven games, every one of them have scored at least eight points in a game. Bruneel has reached that mark multiple times, while Thorny has gone off for 13 already and Thoseby has dropped 16 in a game. They've been kept scoreless just seven times between the three of them.

In other words, advantage 2012 on that one... for now. 

Without reaching too far...

While that 2008 team was basically terrible defensively, they could win a shootout with another team. That's a quality that this 2012 team doesn't really have yet. Medlin has found his outside shooting touch, but the n00b trio hasn't yet. For the haters of those guys, just remember how badly Brian Green struggled early on, only to basically donkey punch the single-season 3-point shooting record books at USU by the end of that year. Just give the boys a little time.

Also, Brockeith Pane needs to rediscover both his ability to finish around the rim and his ability to find open teammates on the wings. Pretty soon you'll need to take your socks off to count how many times this year he's forced up a bad shot while Medlin is wide open outside just dying to get a pass his way. The more work this team gets together though, the more Stew ball we'll see. You can see it in flashes early in games where the team is focused and fresh off of some solid game planning, but they haven't done well in maintaining that once the opposition makes adjustments.

Without their most experienced player in Jardine, that growing will be that much more difficult, which means that the development of Stone and Reed in those big man spots will be crucial to what ultimately decides the fate of this team. If those guys can demand pressure down low and open up space for the shooters outside, this team just might get some butter to put on their bread.

Main point being though...

Step away from the ledge with Aggie basketball. If nothing else, this should be a thrill to finally not know for once that the team is going to ruthlessly dominate everyone in its path. We get to watch a new team grow and develop for the first time since 2008 really, only this team is much younger. But won't those good times feel that much more special having battled through the hardest of hard times with the team? I think plenty of USU football fans out there might answer "yes" to that question, even despite the memory of how rough things got at times.

And really, what better example of why you stick with a team than USU football? Proof that you should NEVER give up on your Aggies.

Oh, there's also this Morrill guy running things. He seems to be ok at his job.