Two in a row! Two in a row!

"Bad ass" understates this photo

For the second time this season, the Aggies are on a winning streak! And for the second game in a row, USU racked up assists like they were a Utah State basketball team!

Outdoing Thursday's 17-assist effort, the team had better than 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio Saturday, dishing out 19 dimes while giving up a season-best six turnovers. Or in other words, it was a hell of a team effort. If the team can play with that kind of chemistry the rest of the year, we just might actually turn some heads.

Really with the way the team came out tonight, and how they essentially looked in control for almost the entirety, this game wasn't ever in doubt. And certainly not after Mitch Bruneel had anything to say about things either. Basically the Aggies won this game in every statistical category except the turnover battle. Rare will it be the case that you can lose the turnover battle with only six TOs, but winning in shooting percentages, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks and points will have to do for now.

Not much else to really say about this game before getting into the individual props, so let's get on with it, eh?

Matt Lopez makes it official

Utah State has added even more size for next season. Rumors of former La Salle center Matt Lopez transferring to USU had been circulating for a couple weeks, and finally became clear this week. Lopez is now an Aggie.

After coming to La Salle with moderate expectations, Lopez rarely saw the floor and apparently that was enough to convince him to seek greener pastures. Based on his numbers, it would seem that Stew has another project on his hands to go along with Jordan Stone for the next few years, but when it comes to guys who are borderline seven-footers, that's one hell of a framework to start with for a guy as good at coaching big men as Stew has been.

There's a few videos on Youtube featuring Lopez, one of him working out, and another that is an actual highlight reel of him basically picking on dudes much shorter than him. Tough to take too much from either of them, but from what I can gather, he's clearly working on things like post move fundamentals and footwork in the workout video, and in the highlight video he seems to have some decent instincts on reading a play and getting in position to make a block. He also seems to have some tenacity, which should take him a long way with size like his.

Sharing is caring... or winning, or whatever. Ag's win.

Do you see what happens Larry when you hit a teammate with a pass!?!?

17 assists!!! That'll be good for 77 points, and 77 points would have been good enough to win each of the last three games. The team had more assists tonight than the previous two games combined, which they sure as hell needed tonight, what with them getting outrebounded by 20... TWENTY!!!! (had to spell it out since you can't put numbers into all caps).

If this game had turned out to be a loss, I would be absolutely furious. Instead I'm just kind of passively furious, and really just happy to have come out with a win.

Touche Parsing the WAC.... Touche....

Aggie fans' first world problems

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... If you're a fan of any team in the WAC, and you don't read Parsing The WAC, you're doing it wrong.

Kevin McCarthy, like he so often does, pretty much nailed it yesterday in offering some therapy to Utah State fans. I also can't help but wonder if much of that was in response to my own personal explosion of frustration regarding the State of the Aggies after 20 games. Seeing as how he used the exact same picture of stepping off a ledge I used back in December when I made the same plea, I dare say he's paying attention to this site... or he just does a Google image search for random photos just like all of us bloggers out there do.

The point is, he basically threw down the perfect counterpoint to my point, with a little outsiders perspective.

Yes, Aggie fans have been spoiled as hell the past few years. From 2009-2011, USU lost one fewer WAC game over a three year span than last year's second place team did in 2011 alone. Prior to losing at home to Nevada this season, the last time USU lost a WAC home game, the current USU freshman class were eighth graders. The last time Utah State lost three WAC games in one year, nobody gave a shit, or even really yet knew of Sarah Palin (Those were the days, eh?)

Maybe it's good we're remembering what it's like to lose. This season will make winning feel that much better if/when the team gets back on track.

History lesson
Since the WAC as we know it came to be in 2005-06, no other team has suffered a greater loss in a single offseason as what USU has had to deal with going into this year. One of the closest examples though is what Nevada lost after the 2009-10 season (you know how I love me some historical comparisons).

Luke Babbitt, Armon Johnson, Brandon Fields, Joey Shaw and Ray Kraemer all moved on, leaving Dario Hunt as essentially the only returning player with experience. The result was a 13-19 team with a .500 record in WAC play last year. There were good individual performances, but their inexperience held them back, particularly in playing as a team. They averaged just 11.8 assists per game on the year. USU this year is averaging 11.7... See why I dig these historical comparisons?

And just look at Nevada now.

Leadership
Everything changed once Brady Jardine got hurt. The dude is just a leader, plain and simple. Preston Medlin is growing into that role, but it's just not the same as it would have been. One of the biggest complaints is that this year's team doesn't look or play like a Stew Morrill team, but they still play for Stew, and eventually he'll mold them into what he wants to see.

Not how things were supposed to be
The problem this year isn't just that six seniors graduated, the team's leader getting hurt and a massive amount of inexperience. James Walker and Norvell Arnold would likely have been stars on this team. Antonio Bumpus and Steven Thornton would have provided MUCH needed depth on the wings. Deshawn Stephens probably would be the first big man off the bench right now had he held his commitment.

In other words, plan A of this rebuilding year pretty much entirely fell through. Stew had to resort to plan B, and with the injuries to Jardine and Bumpus, plan B was done no favors. The last time a team this young was forced to learn on the fly, the young guys had Jaycee Carroll, Gary Wilkinson, Kris Clark and Steve Ducharme to help them along.

The result is that we're finally seeing that down year that the has been prophesied by Stew for so long. We didn't want to believe this would be the case, and with a Jardine in the picture, it likely wouldn't have been, but it is. 

In closing...
Yes, it does look like the Aggies are sharing their gold this year... Enjoy it WAC. We don't plan on sharing it for long.

Patience has been exhausted. Time to rant.

I gave this team a nearly infinite level of forgiveness early on this year for being a young team dealing with losing a senior leader to injury. They essentially could do no wrong early on and were given the benefit of the doubt in just about every way by me. Then as they started winning some games and looking good, I sang their praises like effing crazy. All the while, I've relentlessly had their backs.

During the Gossners Tournament, it looked like this team grew up and was ready to make a run at another WAC title. They were playing team ball, executing in every way, and just looked totally in sync. 

Vandals win 57-54... Not happy about this.

So, let's talk basketball strategy for a bit...

 - When you have only a four-point lead over a team with just under four minutes left to play in a game, chances are you will need to score more than just one point in the final 3:45 to hold on for the win.

 - Turning the ball over on four out of five possessions prior to a final attempt at a game-tying 3-pointer is a no-no... You see, if you don't turn the ball over like that and maybe even make a basket or two in that span, you won't even need to be looking to tie the game with a 3-pointer.

 - One, yes ONE field goal attempt in the last four minutes of the game for Utah State. That one attempt being the attempted game-tying 3-pointer.

Doing nothing really well gets an "L"; USU loses 73-66

This whole assists thing almost feels like broken record at this point, but it keeps showing to be true. You see, Stew Morrill's offense is designed in a way that demands players set each other up and make crisp passes. As a result, they get good looks, shoot high percentages from the field and usually seem to be able to hang in games where they seem very physically overmatched.

That hasn't really been the case lately though. For the third game in a row, USU totaled just eight assists on the game. When the Aggies also get killed in rebounds and field goal shooting, you almost have to be grateful that a seven-point loss is all this turned out to be.

Back on track. 2-2 in WAC. USU wins 69-65

Best picture from Saturday's game that I could steal, I mean... legally
obtain. It's for educational purposes, how about that?

Apparently the trick to winning WAC games this year for Utah State is to play teams that call themselves the Bulldogs. This time was a little more dramatic than the last win over a Bulldog team, but it was a win nonetheless. Now USU stands at 2-2 in WAC play with one blowout win and a close loss at home to go with a blowout loss and a close win on the road. If nothing else, at least USU isn't losing to the bad teams in the WAC so far. That much is something encouraging after two discouraging losses to the other WAC contenders.

Drive for five is officially an uphill battle. USU falls 80-60

This sums things up pretty well about now...

Even though USU knows plenty about starting 1-2 in WAC play and still dominating the conference (see 2009-10 season), this is going to be a much tougher task.

For a while it was looking like Utah State was going to take this game down to the wire and possibly even escape with a comfortable victory. Leading 46-42 with 15 minutes to play, nothing ever looked out of control... Then NMSU went on a 28-6 run. Game over.

Basically New Mexico State went to their zone defense, keyed-in hard on not letting Preston Medlin get a good look, and basically laughed at USU from that point on. Danny Berger, Mitch Bruneel and Adam Thoseby combined to shoot just 1-12 from the field, including 0-6 from the 3-point line. That is very bad. And not due to any shortage of good looks either.

Basketball's mid-term grades

With 16 games of a 31 game regular season now played, it's about time to give an assessment on where everybody is at so far. As was done with football, the grade will be given on the basis of production relative to expectations (so when E.J. Farris gets as good a grade as Brockeith Pane, you'll understand why). Since basketball has been a national powerhouse, their expectations are a tiny bit higher, so I might not be quite as forgiving as I was with a 7-6 football team. Since there have been injuries, departures and some guys just not playing much, I'm setting the cutoff at 10 games played on the year.


POINT GUARDS

Brockeith Pane
This year has been a bit of a roller coaster with Pane. He lit up BYU to start the year, the followed that up with a pretty awful performance against Weber State, which turned out to be somewhat representative of the next few weeks for him. But over the last four games, Pane has adjusted his game in a very good way to become more of a distributor rather than a scorer. Not that he can't score, because we all know he can. Early on it seemed like he was forcing things way too hard. He needs to continue using his ability to create for teammates and be aware of a quality chance to score when it comes to him. He's been pretty good at times, but really bad at others. If I had to guess though, I'd say it's all uphill from here.
MID-TERM GRADE: B-

Early advantage goes to the Pack. Nevada wins 78-71

To sum up this game in one word... Rebounding.

The margin on the final stats say only -10 for USU. I call BS on that. Nevada beat the Aggies on the boards worse than I've ever seen an opposing team beat Utah State in rebounds.

The only other real storyline in this game was Nevada's performance in the clutch. Every time they needed a clutch shot, clutch rebound or clutch turnover, they made it happen.

On top of it all, Nevada capitalized on their advantage in the experience department. All of the more experienced Aggies played solid games, but the guys new to the system struggled in big ways, and Nevada took a huge advantage there.

From here, the WAC battle is uphill. If USU continues to improve, they'll win plenty of road games over the lower-tier of the WAC. If The Spectrum brings it the rest of the year like it did tonight, USU won't lose again at home.

It's more "ifs" than we're used to at USU, but it would make reaching the top of this hill that much sweeter. Now though, the pressure is really on for USU to go on the road and deliver.

WAC's elite in a Saturday meet; Aggies vs. Wolf Pack

The top of the Western Athletic Conference standings has had either Utah State or Nevada at the top for every one of the last eight seasons. Anybody want to take bets on if this will be year No. 9 of that run?

So far this year, Nevada has been the best, most consistent team in the WAC. With that in mind, it's no surprise that they're carrying the best record in non-conference play of anyone in the conference either, even if their strength of schedule is the weakest of the WAC's top four teams. They've only lost to good teams, and it's been a month and a half since that last happened.

After opening the year with a blowout loss to Missouri State (who is a solid team despite their record), Nevada went on the road to UNLV and took them to the wire, eventually losing 71-67. The Wolf Pack's only other loss came on a neutral court where BYU handed them a 21-point loss. Since then, Nevada has ran off eight-straight wins. On the flip side of that, they haven't faced a real test in a month now.

New coach, same result; Aggies railroad Fresno, 72-53

High five bro, we're 1-and-0!

To Fresno's credit, they looked like a real basketball team at times tonight. They actually passed to each other, set screens, ran plays and all that other stuff Steve Cleveland never taught them to do. The only problem is that they don't have much talent to work with.


Even Kevin Olekaibe, the WAC's leading scorer going into tonight, hit a wall against the USU defense (we'll call his wall Medlin... that's a fitting name, right?). Olekaibe shot just 4-of-14 from the field, scoring 11 points, all of them coming in the first half. Outside of one assist, he didn't register any other statistics, which really is kind of a head-scratcher for a guy who logged 32 minutes, but whatever.

Checking in from the "news that is really easy to believe" department was another great all-around game from Preston Medlin. On top of locking down the WAC's top scorer defensively, Pre-Med dropped a team-high 19 points on 6-of-9 shooting (3-of-5 from 3-point land), three rebounds, three assists and one steal.

Oh, and he had a dunk, which was pretty awesome, but still left him four behind Kyisean Reed on the night. Reed broke the 13-point barrier, that once seemed unbreakable, for the second time in three games. When you throw down five dunks, it's easy to shoot 87.5 percent for the game like he did. Blocking three shots and pulling down 10 rebounds is a nice way to complement 16 points too.

Bout to get wiggity up in here!! Aggies vs. Bulldogs

Non-conference play is, for the most part, done with. Based on the collective results of said non-conference play, WAC teams finally have something to play for. With the No. 16 ranked conference RPI and a grand total of five wins against top-100 RPI teams throughout the conference, nobody is getting an at-large bid this season. So what's left is a regular season championship trophy and seeding for the WAC Tournament in March.

So we begin here, with Utah State rolling as of late and looking a fifth consecutive championship is now a real possibility. Of the five top-100 RPI wins, Utah State lays claim to two of them (BYU, Kent State). Really since Danny Berger came into the picture, this team has been a force, going 5-2 in the last seven games, with the only losses coming to Wichita State (No. 31 in RPI) and AP No. 15 ranked Mississippi State. They've turned things on to become at the very least the team people thought they could be, but in my opinion, they've been playing even better than most people probably expected they ever would. It's a change that you can't help but be excited about as an Aggie fan.

Football: Final defensive grades

Part 2 of 2: Grading the Utah State defensive units on their performance during the 2012 season. Like last time, grades are given on a mixture of performance relative to expectations, with a little bit of gut feeling of what they deserve thrown in.


Defensive line
There were times where this unit looked capable of dominating a game, others when opposing quarterbacks had as much time as they needed to work with. Still, even in a 3-4, the D-line has plenty of work to do in stopping the run, which USU was pretty good at this year. Sacks were few and far between for the most part, and the inconsistency was infuriating at times.
FINAL GRADE: B-

Linebackers
Dominant is what this unit was. They were clearly the backbone of the defense, anchored by seniors Bobby Wagner and Kyle Gallagher. Then came Tavaris McMillian and Maurice Alexander, as well as a fair amount of reps from Jake Doughty, Levi Koskan and Bojay Filimoeatu. Every one of those players shined defensively, leading what was the best linebacker unit in the WAC, probably by a hefty margin.
FINAL GRADE: A

Football: Final offensive grades

Michael Smith receives USU's team MVP honors at the
Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

Part 1 of 2: Grading the Utah State offensive units on their performance during the 2011 season. Grades are given on a basis of how well the units performed this season relative to their expectations.


Quarterbacks
Chuckie Keeton had taken the nation by storm by the end of the first half of football he played. Adam Kennedy kept things going and then some after Keeton went down with an injury. Both of them were doing so in their first tastes of Division-1 football. They combined 21 touchdowns and only six interceptions, while racking up 2,109 yards. As good as Keeton was, Kennedy's average numbers are better than Keeton's in almost every department (even rushing yards per attempt). Keeton saw more snaps on the year, so his totals are higher, but both were stellar. And while they didn't get to open things up much and throw downfield, they still turned a position fans and coaches thought would be a liability into one of the brightest spots on the team.
FINAL GRADE: A

Dave Baldwin out, Matt Wells in as USU's offensive coordinator

Dave Baldwin is going to be the offensive coordinator of Colorado State University next season. Quarterbacks coach Matt Wells will be the guy filling Baldwin's shoes at the helm of the offense, giving a lot of USU fans exactly what they wanted as far as next year's offensive coordinator is concerned.

Wells, who is pretty decently traveled if you read his bio, was brought in last year to coach USU's quarterbacks and helped groom a pair of studs in Adam Kennedy and Chuckie Keeton. Given the job he did on preparing those guys for primetime, it's not tough to see why he was a hit among Aggie fans. Not only that, but given his relationship with the quarterbacks, chances are he won't be shy about opening up the passing game next season, something Baldwin seemed reluctant to do over his career at USU despite seemingly stellar results whenever he did.

Despite the loss, believe the hype; Aggies fall 66-64

With conference play just days away now, things are looking awfully familiar in the WAC landscape... Utah State looks like the team to beat, Nevada is solid but inconsistent and New Mexico State looks to be imploding due to their players being, well, New Mexico State players.

In the case of Utah State, the Gossner's tournament was no fluke. This team has turned a corner. They've turned a corner in a way that for a while seemed almost unfathomable, but after Saturday's game, it's almost tough to remain skeptical. The Aggies went on the road to play the No. 14 team in the country - a team with three guys projected to be NBA draft picks this year - and took them to the brink.

Going into WAC play, everything seems to be clicking for Utah State. Now they look like a young team that has grown up together, found out who they are and what they're capable of and are ready to make everyone who doubted that they could make it five-in-a-row look stupid.