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.


We saw this at Weber State too. Even though the team still has a long way to go in coming together as a team, and while they're getting nothing but hammered in the injury department, they've still got some fight in them. Call me an optimist (and I am), but I guess rather than throw myself over the edge with a team, I'm more of the "throw a rope over the edge and pull them up any way possible" kind of guy. When seven of the 10 players to take the floor for USU tonight were in their first year of playing college basketball at the Division-1 level, it's tough to expect a whole ton. For the three guys with experience, one of them is only a sophomore, who despite being an obvious backbone of this team, had an off night. The other two were seniors, one who also had one of the worst shooting nights of his career while the other was sick and injured and only played 11 minutes.

Still, the boys in blue only lost by eight points on the road. Yes, a loss is a loss, but six graduated seniors and Brady Jardine is also a pretty monumental loss. A team this young and inexperienced isn't going to pull out many games on the road this early on.

What this team needs more than anything is a reminder that people. This team needs The Spectrum more than absolutely anything right now. And I don't mean just people filling seats and covering up the autumn colors with blue shirts, I mean THE SPECTRUM. The kind of building where it goes absolutely off the chain for every USU basket and is deafeningly loud whenever the Aggies are on defense.

This isn't one of those things for anybody to sit at home as a true non-believer and just wait for everyone else to occupy those seats until the team shows something more to your liking either. This takes everybody to make it happen. So don't bother with excuses, just get out to the game Tuesday and inject some life into this team. Remind them how many people are living and dying with them each game and keep that fire they've got burning. Hell, maybe even brighten that flame.


Notes

• Kyisean Reed is starting to put it together. After going scoreless in the first two games, he's averaging nine points and 6.5 rebounds per game over his last four outings, all while shooting better than 60 percent from the field... All of which is good, because we need him.
• Jordan Stone is getting thrust into bigger roles whether he likes it or not, but he's answering the bell pretty well. You can tell he's still very raw, but he's also progressing, and he is active in using his size to make a big play here and there.
• Paging Steven Thornton...
• Danny Berger... Wish I could understand the pulling of that redshirt. That leaves four inexperienced wings to fight over basically one spot on the court with Medlin playing about 35 minutes per game.