It ends tonight... Let's end it right!!!

Hold nothing back tonight. The Spectrum should be full, rocking off the hook,
and ruthless as can be!! (thanks to TrueAggies.com for the greatest photo ever)

As of Wednesday morning, there are only 10 teams left in the nation still playing college basketball. Regardless of where you're playing, that is something to be proud of, and at the very least is something the shouldn't be written off as an insignificance.

Sure, the CIT has its fair share of haters, and to a point, that is understandable. It's the bottom rung of college basketball postseason tournaments, gets little to no fanfare or publicity, and is comprised entirely of teams who, at some point, fell short of their more lofty goals they'd aimed for this basketball season. Just like I said two weeks ago when I issued the Man Challenge to this Aggie team, it would be easy for any team to just kill over and die when landing in a second, third, or ever fourth-rate postseason tournament. A handful of past Aggie teams have done just that, even in the NIT, which usually features its fair share of ESPN games.

Screw it though! Screw everyone who says winning this tournament doesn't mean a thing! The CIT is where Utah State has landed this season, and Wednesday, the Aggies have the chance to prove that they were the best among the field where they landed. Utah State has the chance to at least say we dominated the CIT when we ended up there to finish off what was supposed to be our worst season in nearly 20 years.

Man Challenge: Win the CIT

This is an official issue of a man challenge to the 2011-12 Utah State Aggies basketball team: Win the CollegeInsider.com Tournament!!!

In the past we've seen a handful of very talented teams find themselves in the NIT after falling short of an NCAA Tournament bid and go into the consolation bracket only to kill over and die. We've seen great seasons where the team fell short of an NCAA auto-bid turn into disappointing home losses, and in turn, taken away any credibility to any claim that Utah State should have been an NCAA Tournament team in the first place.

Even in the season where the Aggies became the first ever top 25 team to be excluded from The Big Dance, they left any passion for winning in the regular season and went from overall No. 1 seed in the NIT to an opening round loss at home. It's a difficult to see a team get their hearts ripped out. It's even more difficult to watch as a fan when they don't even try to put their heart back into things to make the best of a tough situation.