That all would be fun, right? I mean, the last time a no-name team from Montana came to town there were a handful of great moments in that game. Last year against Montana-Western we at least got to see Brian Green hit six 3-pointers and Tai Wesley break a backboard. James Walker taught us how to Dougie, Brady Jardine hit a 3-pointer and even Brad Brown scored. It was just an overall fun as hell night at The Spectrum.
Tuesday though, not a whole lot of fun. None of the above things happened. Instead we got a game that was frustrating, sloppy, ugly and uninspired. I could probably dive into a thesaurus and dig up plenty more adjectives for it, but I feel it's best equated to the awkwardness of the love scene on that one South Park episode between Mr. Mackey and Ms. Choksondik. You didn't want to bail on the team if you made the effort to get there Tuesday, just like you didn't want to ditch watching that episode just because of that one really weird part.
The crowd was also probably the most sparsely attended, uninspired crowd to ever grace a February game in The Spectrum. We'll get to more of that in the next post though.
Anyway, comparisons aside, this game sucked. I dare say my favorite part of the entire night was the shock I got from hearing Ben Clifford's name in the starting lineup. But then he didn't even have a very good game.
The team just looked completely uninterested in really earning a win Tuesday, figuring they pretty much had it in the bag from the beginning. While that probably was the case, they could have at least spared us the thought of, "we're not REALLY going to lose to a team like this at home, are we?"
Thankfully, Preston Medlin's "give-a-shit" is still in good working order, and he went ahead to lead USU in scoring and rebounding for the game. Had he not gone cold from outside in the second half, he probably would have gone over 30 for the game, and maybe if he'd kept shooting, scored 40+. The fact that Pre-Med had to play 38 minutes in a game to beat Montana Tech is honestly just upsetting. How is it that nobody can step up and play hard enough to produce even a little bit to give the kid a break?
Yeah, they got a win, and when they wanted to, took the game over. Maybe they knew they could do that and still get a win and were looking ahead to Saturday, but still, it would be nice to see this team play with at least a little bit of fire. Medlin can only lead by example so much in that department. The other guys have to help him out by maybe motivating themselves a bit.
NOTES
- Ben Clifford needs to do more with that kind of opportunity against that kind of team than he did tonight. I was hoping for a double-double. Five points and two boards isn't a gamebreaker by any means. Redemption on Saturday maybe??
- Amazingly, Clifford's output was the second best performance by an Aggie big man. Grim and Reed both tried about as hard to play a good game as the screenwriters for almost every Nicolas Cage movie ever tried to make a good movie.
- Jordan Stone's six points led the USU bigs Tuesday. He played about half the minutes as the other guys too. He did only pull down one rebound, which is a head-scratcher since he had at least six inches of height advantage over any defender he saw tonight.
- Brockeith Pane, coming off the bench, had a pretty great game. He basically realized how effectively he could get to the rim against that defense and capitalized on it. He also had five assists to only one turnover. It was a really solid game by him.
- Danny Berger probably was tonight's runner-up to Pre-Med in the "give a s***" department. His play lately has been steadily improving again, enough to convince me that the kid is probably going to be a total stud the next couple years, especially after hitting the weights.
- E.J. Farris deserves mention, and really at this point, a lot of it. He's a walk-on, who plays hard, would get recruited over in a heartbeat, but still shows up and performs. He doesn't do a ton of stuff on the court that will wow you, but he plays hard, and really makes you want to see him succeed.
- Not 100 percent sure on this, but I'm pretty sure tonight was the first time we've ever seen Igor check BACK into a game. Oh, and he tied for the second most rebounds of any big man on the team tonight... with two.
- No Adam Thoseby... Sad sad day...
Player of the Game: Preston Medlin
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