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.

Also from a basketball standpoint though is the fact that this team had five wing players battling for minutes after Berger's redshirt was yanked, and one of those five is the best player on the team, playing about 35 minutes per game. That left 45 minutes of playing time to be battled for by four guys. And while it's still early and the games for Berger, Thoseby and Bruneel still have plenty of room to develop, in the personal opinion of TSS, Thornton's ceiling was the highest of that bunch. Not that the other three amigos (yes, that's going to be a thing now) don't look promising, but Thornton was one of those elite-looking athletes that looked capable of doing some great things with some progression to his game.

Now the pressure is on for the Three Amigos to play consistently well because there is one less guy to hope steps up and has a big game if nobody else is feeling it. And really, given the youth there, along with the flashes shown by each guy so far, there's reason to be encouraged.

Berger has already been the hero of one game with his 2nd half FYM performance against Utah Valley. Bruneel looks to be the epitome of a "Stew guy", and as he gets more comfortable in the offense I think he's going to be a very solid and dependable player. Thoseby is going to be the next 3-point X-factor along the lines of Stavon Williams and Brian Green. He's still just getting his feet wet, but when Stew plays a true freshman 15 minutes a game this early in the year and gives him the green light to shoot it, the kids has to be doing something right.

Now though, we move on...