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| No words could do justice to this dude's excellence |
What’s left of this basketball team hasn’t exactly had an
easy road to find their legs. Their first game involved getting thrown into the fire on the road
against Denver, who is one of the WAC’s best this year. UT-Arlington is in that
discussion as well, while La Tech seems firmly established as the team to beat.
The 0-3 result is obviously the last thing you want, but the
progress they’ve shown is at least encouraging. They put together a decent 2nd
half at Denver, showed some encouraging intensity against UTA, and now took the
best team in the WAC to the wire.
Again, 0-3 in these games is tough to swallow, but these
guys sure as hell are putting up a ballsy fight to make it interesting.
Much like UTA, La Tech is a good defensive team. They’re
athletic and they’ve got some length to make things especially difficult for a
USU team trying to learn how to walk all over again. That defensive pressure
resulted in only 15 made field goals by USU. But as bad as that was offensively
for the Aggies, they still managed to hold the Bulldogs to only 19-of-57
shooting from the field. That kind of defensive pressure is going to have to be
commonplace for wins to start coming for these guys.
OUTLOOK
Depressing as the loss was, especially after The Spectrum got rocking like it was, it at least was nice to see the guys make it exciting. Hanging with quality teams is that much more thrilling knowing we’re such underdogs, and every win they get is going to be an important one from here on out.
I do believe those wins will come though. These guys have
responded with more than enough toughness to make things start happening. All
they need now is the execution to come around too. Even with last year’s
struggles, we’ll probably never see a stretch where wins are tougher to come by
than riding out this 2013 season. But each of those wins will mean that much
more with the underdog status we’re now carrying.
If the repetition of 23+ win seasons for USU basketball had
gotten at all stale for you, then this new storyline should have you on the
edge of your seat. The Spectrum crowd nearly took that game over Saturday, and
if one more USU 3-pointer goes down, the building would have come apart.
The crowd will be that much more crucial to wins from here
on out… Be a part of it.
NOTES
NOTES
- Despite
a poor shooting night, if Spencer Butterfield isn’t your favorite
guy on this team, I think you’re doing it wrong. This guy is all that is
man! He finished with 16 points and 15 rebounds to round off a
mind-blowingly gritty game. The amount of things he makes happen with his
hustle is just awesome to watch. Rudy himself would be in awe at how much
heart this dude plays with. He’s the clear-cut leader of this squad now,
and it seems like everyone else’s intensity is stepping up along with his.
- Among
the increased intensity Saturday was Jarred Shaw. Defensively and
in rebounding, Shaw was significantly better against in this game than he
was on Thursday. His offensive game wasn’t perfect, but you can’t fret
about 21 points and 14 boards. He also had four blocks.
- Tenale
Roland and Jordan Stone were the only other Aggies to make a
field goal Saturday, with one each.
- Ben
Clifford couldn’t get anything to fall, but still had the hustle and
rebounding to make things happen. Dude is just a scrapper, and I think
down games are going to be much more of a rarity going forward.
- Interesting
that Stone and Lopez only combined for 11 minutes… Good as Shaw was, these
two need to play their way onto the court more than this.
- Still
eagerly awaiting the return of Marcel Davis’ shooting ability. I
figured it would drop off a bit from where it was a month ago, because he
was shooting it really well. I didn’t figure that his ability to shoot
would completely abandon him. He did most everything else well against the
Bulldogs, but at least a little bit of scoring is badly needed from him
- 3-14 from the 3-point line… If only it was 4-14…
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