USU basketball adding another point guard

Oh hey! Bet you didn't think this website still existed, did you? Sometimes we all need a nice little 19-day break, and I just might take another one of those soon. With the bulk of Spring football practices taking place not long after I usually go to bed (and certainly long before I wake up), getting reports on those hasn't exactly been doable for this guy.

But with news starting to come about in some places, as well as Saturday's Spring Football game looming large, there's suddenly things to write about.

Leading off the news is the verbal commitment of another player in basketball's 2013 class with point guard Viko Noma'aea.

Noma'aea was a 2011 high school graduate and first-team all-state basketball selection in the State of Nevada. He averaged 17.7 points, 5.9 rebounds, and five assists per game during his senior season at Sierra Vista High School.

Giving basketball a look ahead to 2013-14

Spring football got underway today, which is pretty freaking exciting! But there won't be shoulder pads in the mix for a couple more days, and not a whole lot to report in the department, so I'm going to hold off on talking about that until after Thursday when they practice in the afternoon and we can all go and get ourselves and nice, personal look at things.

In the meantime, let's give some quick takes on USU basketball's current forecast of how next season could play out with personnel. Obviously things could change a little bit between now and maybe the middle of summer, but my guess is it would be minimal.

On paper, USU looks to be in pretty decent shape for next year, assuming they can stay healthy this next time around. It's worth taking a quick look at, so let's hit these positions really quick.

The dust settles on unlucky 13

Selection Sunday came and went, and at no point was Utah State's name announced.

This feels anything but normal, but given the circumstances, I can't say it really feels all that upsetting either. Utah State was offered a bid in the College Basketball Invitational, which is a step up even from last year's inclusion in the CIT. But with half the team injured already, exhaustion undoubtedly having set in for the team, and a couple other nagging injuries among the last men still standing, the bid was turned down.

Most of me is happy with this decision. The guys have already had to give so much more into this season than players should ever have to, and with some players enduring injuries already, the risk is awfully great.

Were it not for Marcel Davis and Spencer Butterfield battling their nagging injuries, I'd say go for it. See if this team has one last epic fight in them. And I bet they'd be eager for the chance to step into the ring and keep fighting too. Can't fault Stew for wanting to protect his guys though.

Disappointment aside, I don't know how or why any sane person wouldn't be proud as hell of this team! They endured one player quitting, watching a teammate nearly die, another player quitting, a superstar getting injured, another superstar getting injured minutes later, and watching one player get carried off the bench to the locker room, later ending up in the hospital. And that's just the trials that involved personnel changes to the roster for periods of time.

Playing into unexpectedly heightened roles, moving to unfamiliar positions, and playing through nagging injuries were just condiments on the s*** sandwich that was served to Utah State basketball in 2013.

It obviously leaves one to wonder what 2013 could have been like had the roster not continually imploded throughout the year. At the same time, these guys are all going to be better moving forward because of what they endured during this hellacious season. And with the Mountain West in next year's sights, that experience is going to be huge!

Aggies ride a big red dog to victory on senior night

Utah State opened WAC play this season with a four-point win over UTSA, with Preston Medlin and Kyisean Reed combining for 33 points. Ben Clifford and Tenale Roland weren't really factors in that game either, combining for only three points. So with that in mind, this game looked like a potentially dangerous one.

Nobody told the Aggies though...

USU came out, slowly built a small lead, slowly built on that lead, and slowly twisted the knife on the Roadrunners throughout the entire game.

It was all Clifford and Spencer Butterfield in the first half, with the two of them combining for 23 of USU's 25 points. Clifford kept on pwning n00bs in the second half, with Roland, Jarred Shaw, and even Matt Lopez getting in on the scoring.

When it all came down to it, the Aggies just kind of dominated in every area in this game. The bulk of those details are worthy of bullet points, so let's cut the crap and get to it!

NOTES

•  22 assists to only 10 turnovers!!! Happy happy, joy joy.
• Nine blocks for the team. It seems like they've been blocking the hell out of teams lately, which I'm just fine seeing more of!
• Oh hi Matt Lopez! Very nice to see you! Eight points on 4-4 shooting with two rebounds and two blocks in only six minutes will do just fine! Again, happy happy, joy joy!
• Spencer Butterfield only had three rebounds, which drops his rebounding average over the last two games to only 11.5 per game. Throw in 14 points and five assists and you've got another solid game, but really what else would you expect from him?
• Jarred Shaw seemed content to let Clifford steal the show down low tonight, but still finished with 11 points and nine boards. Next week is time for Shaw to really kick things into FYM, and remind everyone else in the WAC that he is Jarred Shaw, and they are not.
• Not a bad showing once again from Tenale Roland. He's really been a completely new player out there ever since Bracketbuster weekend. Scored 14 points (all in the second half), pulled down six boards, dished three assists, and even had a block.
• Marvin Jean's 10 rebounds, four assists, a steal, and a block are all pretty good looking. His 1-8 shooting is not. He badly needs to find his shot again because he can be a major X-factor going into next week if he gets hot.

SENIOR NIGHT - KYISEAN REED

It was heart-wrenching to have to bid farewell to this team's lone senior without him being able to suit up. It was the second year in a row too that a senior wasn't able to play because of injury. But for what it's worth, it looked like Kyisean was smiling for a lot of the game, and just seemed to be happy to be there with his teammates.

Everything about this dude just bleeds character. Whether it's how far he developed his game from last season to this one, to the reports of how good a student he has been at USU, there's nothing you could not like about this guy.

We'll be left to only wonder forever how much different this season could have been with him for these last couple months, and how special a moment there might have been if he'd thrown down one last high-flying dunk on his senior night.

Basketball aside, dude is going places in life. And even though his time was cut way too short, I know I'm not alone when I say I'm damn proud that Kyisean Reed is an Aggie!

Player of the Game: Ben Clifford

With 11 first-half points, it looked like Ben Clifford would finally break his previous career-high of 14 points. Turns out he shattered that, going off for 21 points to go with eight boards, three assists, and three blocks. All-around great game from him, but maybe most impressive was the ways in which he scored. Posting up, finishing on a fast break, hitting mid-range jumpers; all of it was a showing of how dangerous he can be as a player. He may never be a superstar, but he's been pretty steadily dependable through two full regular seasons now, and it looks like these major minutes he's been playing will really pay off down the road.

Aggies load up the statsheet for win No. 20

After that abysmal showing against Arlington last week that not even I could bear to write about, USU bounced the hell back on Thursday against probably the WAC's worst team. And even though Texas State is a total patsy, the Aggies pretty thoroughly dominated them, which is what they needed to do in this one.

The finish by USU pretty damn awful, but that's sort of tradition when the Aggies have a late lead. It seems like if the team is down big, they're the ones making the strong push late, and if they're up big, all basketball ability seems to vacate.

A win is a win though, and some of the numbers put up are pretty encouraging. Let's bullet point the rest.

Basketball recruiting picking up for USU

With only one senior on this year's basketball roster and already three players locked in from the fall signing class, most everyone had assumed the Aggies were done recruiting for the 2013 class.

Not so fast though...

Last week, Stew Morrill got another commitment for the 2013 class, and then another over this weekend for the 2014 recruiting class. So let's run down what we know so far!

JOJO MCGLASTON - 6'4 shooting guard

Rumor had it before the New Mexico State game that the coaching staff wanted this guy pretty badly. Described by one person as a smaller Kyisean Reed, McGlaston is a stud athlete who can get way up in the air and shoot the deep ball. He's got a quick highlight reel here that you should see. 

Someone with his athleticism should be able to score the ball in a handful of ways, but maybe more importantly, become a lockdown defender. If nothing else, he appears to be in the mold of the kinds of athletes that Utah State will want as the Aggies move to the Mountain West next year.

Bracketbuster Saturday brings out Aggies' best

It's somewhat becoming a trend that post game write-ups from those Saturday games are going to come around much later than others. That whole "Saturday night" thing just gets in the way. You know how it goes.

But how about them Aggies, eh?

More and more these guys are looking like a strong, determined, cohesive unit. The kind the could catch some fire and shock somebody come WAC Tournament time. The weak points of this team seem to be shrinking, while the strengths are getting stronger.

And Saturday's game against Illinois State might have been the best example of it all yet this year. As has often been the case since this became an eight-man team, these guys won by playing pure Stew Morrill basketball. Good shooting, tough defense, sharing the ball, etc.

Aggies beaten at the buzzer again.

SHIT!!!

Not much else needs to be said.

Missed 3-pointers, missed free throws, and too many turnovers cost the Aggies their first win in Provo since the 2004-05 season.

NOTES

• Officiating took all the fun out of this game for quite a while. In their defense, both teams were playing aggressive as hell. A lot of those fouls were legit, and plenty other were very weak. It put guys from both teams in major foul trouble, which is a huge disadvantage for USU being pretty much a seven-man team right now. 51 total fouls called... It was annoying.
• Giving up an offensive rebound to give BYU that final possession is inexcusable. Should have been the Aggies looking to get off a shot in that spot.
• Jordan Stone was an absolute man out there. Easily the best he's looked in his career, scoring nine points, grabbing three rebounds, dishing two assists, and blocking four shots. Just as important, he never looked nervous or out of control with the ball.
• There's plenty of good and bad on the stat lines for both Spencer Butterfield and Marvin Jean. On the bright side, the combined for 32 points, 18 rebounds, and nine assists. Down side is 4-16 shooting from deep, and eight turnovers. All things considered, they played well. Certainly well enough to win, but the defense by BYU was in their faces in to make things difficult.
• Speaking of turnovers, 18 on the game is bad. In games of this caliber, you can't do that and expect to win. Way too many of them can as a result of taking unnecessary risks too. That's got to be fixed by the WAC Tournament if this upset special has a chance of happening.
• Jarred Shaw vs. Brandon Davies was one of the big storylines going into this one. Shaw won that battle without question.
• USU shooting 17-27 from the free throw line is the difference maker in this game. If they had just made 74 percent of their free throws, USU wins.
• Marcel Davis needed to be more of a factor in this one. For how well he's been playing, it's tough to hold much of anything against him. Zero assists though is at least a tiny bit troubling.
• Tyler Haws just seems to be a whiny little bitch. Dude is incredibly talented, but just seems to be all-around unlikeable. I was never able to say the same about that other high-scoring guard who's playing for the Kings now, at least not based on my limited interaction with him via front row heckling.
• In maybe the biggest bit of irony of all time, BYU students chanted "Rogain" at an opposing player... In other words, fuck them and their bubble.
  
• All things considered, it's a hell of a fight put up by the Aggies. No moral victories though. USU should have won this one in Provo. Second loss at the buzzer in a week is brutal too.

Shaw plays the role of the warden. Good Aggies win!

Rivalry games... Gotta love em!

There's just something about that feeling of pure hate when you see that opposing team even warming up. It's like a whole new reminder of what you despise when you finally see them in person. Then it seems like pretty much everything they do just pisses you off more.

But a 19-5 lead can quickly turn all anger into joy, and that's what Utah State built early against New Mexico State. Then things suddenly took a swing into NMSU's favor, and it seemed to coincide with when Sim Bhullar went to the bench. After Jarred Shaw established early on that he was going to attack Bhullar down low and make him respect the mid-range jumper as well, Bhullar was largely ineffective. Shaw's mobility was the biggest advantage (outside of actual talent) that he had over Bhullar, and that was the difference maker in the paint.

Really outside of that run NMSU made following the 19-5 lead and the last minute of the second half, the Good Aggies never really seemed to lack total control of this game. They moved the ball well, shot well, limited turnovers, were aggressive while staying out of foul trouble... Pretty much everything a team needs to do to win against a bigger, faster opponent.

I only say "pretty much" because of how bad that last minute of play was for USU. I can't imagine managing that all any worse than they did. Tenale Roland looked like he was completely unaware of the 10-second rule, dribbling backwards more often than forward. And the team as a whole was way too content to just hold on to the ball in the face of a trap. And then the one time they get it up court, it ends up in the hands of Jordan Stone, sending him to the free throw line for the front-end of a 1-and-1 (which you could guess how that one ended up).

Valentine's Day heartbreak in overtime

The Valentine's Day heartbreaker

My biggest compliment about Utah State's play in the last few games is that they've been playing tough defense, efficient offense, and really just all-around Stew Ball.

Denver does all those things too though, and their team is healthy, so we knew this was going to be a tough one.

To Utah State's credit, there were a handful of times where it looked like this game was on the verge of getting away from them, but the Aggies manned up and kept it within reach.

REGULATION ENDING
The Aggies gave themselves plenty of chances to come out winners tonight. Most of those chances came at the free throw line, and unfortunately, they struggled pretty badly from there.

A-train keeps rolling at San Jose State

Hey look! A picture of a train!

This one was never even close...

For the past few games now, USU is playing pure Stew Ball. The Aggies are shooting great from the field, keeping opponents' field goal percentages down, and even cutting down on turnovers quite a bit from where they've been for the bulk of this year.

The end result? A team who many would criticize as being undersized and athletically inferior going out and dominating teams that might look better on paper. Stew Ball at it's finest.

If you're not falling madly in love with this team right now, I'm not sure you'll ever be satisfied

63-36, final.

Up next is the biggest weekend of games of the year, with the roadie to BYU coming up after that. Let's just go ahead and call these next three games "The Reckoning".

Aggies dominate at Seattle!

For the second game in a row, Utah State was pretty much completely in control over a team that took the healthy version of this team to the wire in The Spectrum.

In a nutshell, this team looks to have found its way. They're playing together, they're more focused, they're playing tough defense... It's coming together for them!

Earning a Sweep Dance given the situation this team is in is nothing short of impressive. Doing it as convincingly as they've done it is nothing short of bad ass. Thinking of what they can do with the way they're playing is nothing short of exciting.

Above all else, I'm in love with this team right now!

Slump busted. Aggies roll at Idaho!

Memo to the Idaho Vandals: He is Jarred Shaw and you are not.

Last time against Idaho, a (mostly) healthy USU team needed an epic comeback and overtime to pull off a win at home. With that in mind, one would think that this game on the road was a blowout waiting to happen, especially when you consider that Preston Medlin and Kyisean Reed combined for 39 points in that game.

No blowout for the Vandals on Thursday. Never even a lead for the home team. Utah State never trailed in this game, riding some stellar shooting and solid defense to the team's first win since the injury assault.

And no player was more crucial to that than Shaw! Going into the game, many might have argued that Idaho's Kyle Barone was the WAC's best big man. Anyone who watched that game would probably argue differently now.

Gone is the longest losing streak of Stew Morrill's tenure, and to add to it, the rest of this team has a quality win under its belt. If they earn themselves a sweep dance this weekend, they just might earn themselves a nickname. I know the "Elite Eight" has been thrown out there, even if it's a little over-complimentary. Also heard "The UnderAgs", which I like. "Eight Men Out" is one that comes to mind too. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Seattle gave plenty of fits to USU at home too, so we need an encore performance by the man in the middle against them.

For now, proud as hell of this team for finally getting a win through this storm they've been weathering. This underdog role is something none of us are really familiar with, but these guys are playing their asses off to make each game interesting, so seeing them come out with a win and representing USU is pretty damn excellent!

Last men standing still learning to walk

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 2^nd 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.

When it came to crunch time though, the Aggies didn’t have the kind of magic they’d had against the likes of Santa Clara and Idaho.

Aggies have no magic against the Mavericks

Welp... If there was going to be a reason to hold strong to any optimism of the Aggies making something special of this injury tidal wave, it was going to have to show itself Thursday against UT-Arlington.

That optimism is mostly dead now. A win on Saturday could possibly be the Mike Williams to this season's Danny Berger, but after the consistent struggles against Denver and now UTA, not looking all that promising.

The problem at this point is that a few teams have exposed even the healthy version of this team to be very turnover prone if you play high-pressure man-to-man defense. The ball handling gets hectic, timing of the offense is all thrown off, passes get picked off, and nobody for the life of them can finish around the basket!

Credit to UTA for playing some balls-out defense all night. Any decent window to shoot was closed out on almost immediately by the quickness of the Mavericks. Either that, or whoever might have been looking for a pass had a defender draped all over him, rarely drawing a foul call.

Make no mistake, the Aggies got beat in this game. There was some absolute shitballs officiating, but a few rather poor calls went USU's way. And at the very least, they were at least somewhat consistently shitty, in which case it's got to fall somewhat on the players to adjust to that. When your former top 150 recruit of a center and junior college all-American point guard shoot a combined 3-19 from the field, that's what will cost you games. Getting crushed in the second half in rebounds like the Aggies did will also do it. And being -7 in turnovers won't help your case either.

I'd harp on the USU bench (i.e. Jordan Stone) getting outscored by UTA's B-team 25-6, but that's not really fair considering the Aggies don't really have a bench anymore.

INTENSITY
Sloppy and frustrating as much of Thursday's play was, the intensity and hustle shown by the team cannot go unmentioned. They at least wanted it, and wanted it badly. They just didn't come through when it came time to execute. At this point in the season, we're used to teams executing things very well, and for whatever reason that's not the case.

Still, that kind of hustle will win a few games. Hell, it'll even make a few games we shouldn't win a lot more interesting. A big shot or two mixed in with a defensive stop or two down the stretch in this game, and we'd all be talking about how great a win this was and the fight this team has in them.

Like I said before, bounce back from this with a win over La Tech, and maybe we'll still have a shred of hope for this season ending on some kind of memorable note.

NOTES

• Spencer Butterfield is all that is man! Despite the loss, he clearly stepped up as the guy willing to put the team on his back, or at least what's left of the team. 23 points, 11 rebounds, three assists, and two steals, all while shooting well from the field gives at least a little comfort that someone is ready to try and fill some big shoes.
• Not really having anything positive to write about Ben Clifford for the first half of the season was tough on me. Thursday, he was who I'd hoped he'd be this season. He shot the ball well to the tune of 12 points, while also pulling down nine rebounds and blocking four shots. If his high-energy play can produce points on a consistent basis, we'll be able to hang in a handful of games.
• If Jarred Shaw had the motor that Clifford had, we'd probably hang around in every game still. Ever since a dominant start to the season though, Shaw seems to have leveled off quite a bit. He could not finish around the basket for the life of him again UTA, and I can't think of any reason why he should have the second fewest rebounds on the team in a game. He's still showing brief flashes of trying to be more physical offensively, but nothing consistent yet.
• Has any true freshman ever had more asked of them than Marcel Davis? (Jaycee Carroll doesn't count. He was an RM as a freshman, not an 18-year-old). Davis has been great in a handful of games this year, but recently has very much hit the freshman wall. Part of the credit goes to the lockdown defense played on him by UTA, but he's also missed some shots he was hitting consistently a few weeks ago. This team badly needs him to return to his December form. I imagine it's got to be a whole lot to handle for the kid though.
• Marvin Jean loves to chuck up long 3-pointers... And you know what? Power to him! He's been hitting them with consistency. He's got a quick release, isn't rattled by collapsing defenders, nor is he shy about just pulling up on a guy. He hasn't shown really anything else offensively, but he also hasn't really needed to. Maybe he's still got some surprises up his sleeve, but regardless, his game has been solid since the injuries set it.
• As for the bench... Jordan Stone had an alright game. He made one really nice move and shot for a score early in the game, but also fumbled a couple Marcel Davis passes that could, and should have been easy scores. I thought Matt Lopez played better than only deserving eight minutes on the floor. Especially with Shaw and Clifford in foul trouble like they were. And Tenale Roland... Seems to be doing at least a little of everything but scoring. This team NEEDS him to be able to be at least a shred of a scoring threat who can hit an occasional 3-pointer.

Coordinated chaos via #USUwhiteboard

The following is a public service announcement of maybe the biggest boost the USU crowd could get to help the team weather this recent wave of injuries. Read carefully!

Over at The Front Row Show, we've spent quite a bit of time lately talking about ways to coordinate the chaos in The Spectrum. Once upon a time a few weird kids were making this newsletter for every home game, but those two losers both graduated, leaving the rest of the crowd without compilations of heckling material.

But there's always been the whiteboards to give updates on heckleworthy things players have done during games. They've led to countless chants and targeted heckling at opposing players, and really brought plenty to the ruthless atmosphere at The Spectrum.

Lately there have been some excellent people over at USUfans.com trying to dig dirt on opposing players once again though. And to add to both that, and the crazies with whiteboards at games, everyone else can get in on things now too. This time, Twitter will be the unifying force for Aggie fans.

It's simple... If you see or read anything about an opposing player leading up to a game, tweet about it with the #USUwhiteboard hash tag. Or if you see anything stupid a player did or said in the first half, tweet it! At halftime, if you're wanting to bring the fury, search that hash tag and get the latest dirt.

Or maybe you've got something hilarious you wanna get chanting, tag it and tweet it!

It doesn't have to be just a few people getting ideas across during games, it can be everyone. All you gotta do is stay involved, and just search the hash tag before the game and again at halftime.

And if you see the man, the legend, and the genius behind this idea (Mr. Jeff Browning), be sure to give him a high five... Jeff f***ing loves high fives!!

Enter "The Ewing Theory"

Worst case scenario set in Monday morning when the news broke that Kyisean Reed was out for the season and Preston Medlin's wrist was broken.

Those two join Danny Berger and Sean Harris among the Aggies missing significant time this season due to injury. If you really want to turn back time, you can validly throw Brady Jardine's name into that mix as well. However you view it, this is officially the season of the injury bug.

Eight players remain, only two of them with playing experience at USU prior to this season. But each of them had been anticipated to contribute in big ways, and now the pressure is officially on!

Enter, The Ewing Theory!

For those who aren't familiar with The Ewing Theory, it's a study that indicated that the New York Knicks almost always performed better as a team when superstar center Patrick Ewing was either out with injury or benched with foul trouble. The thought is that when a team has a clear-cut superstar like that, the supporting cast will get caught up taking their foot off the gas while waiting for the go-to guy to make a play.

Remove the superstar from the equation, and the supporting cast as a whole rallies together.

Aggie bench thrown into the fire against Denver

Preston Medlin and Kyisean Reed are injured. Both could possibly be out for a while too, but we're waiting on more details.

So going into Saturday's game against Denver, Jarred Shaw was the lone guy still starting from the Aggies' opening game lineup. Tenale Roland got demoted, Danny Berger is still recovering from dying, and now Medlin and Reed are banged up. The bench that has struggled so badly for USU the past two weeks would all be seeing major minutes and depended on for production, which is something we've badly needed at times and haven't gotten from them. Then factor in that Denver is a team everyone knew would be contending for the WAC title, and this game had "We're f***ed" written all over it.

The optimist deep down in me thought, "Let's see how these guys respond, and maybe this experience will pay off down the road."

After seeing that game, I actually feel like these guys may have learned a quality lesson in stepping up to the challenge.

One pissed off post game report

The team has been playing sloppy basketball for a while now, so really, what did you think was gonna happen???

Utah State played like s*** for the entire three-game homestand, pretty much like they had all season up to this point. They escaped disaster in one of those three games and let the other two stay way too close. But the main thing is that there's been little-to-no improvement in this team throughout the year. And seeing as how usually by this point in the season the team has found its footing and taken things to the next level, the lack of improvement is disturbing.

If there was any legitimate positive to be taken from those three games, it was that the team at least finished games strong.

And that wasn't all that far off on Thursday against New Mexico State either. Only problem is that USU was down by 21 when they decided to get hot from downtown and throw the tiniest shred of interest into this game.

Outside of that, this one was agony to watch. Utah State was out-hustled, out-manned, out-shot, out-passioned, and out-coached... Yes. Marvin f***ing Menzies out-coached Stew Morrill in a basketball game. That is not ok, and is a frustrating indication of where this team and program currently stand.

Speaking of which... 

Pressure is now officially on for the Aggies

At 14-1 overall and 5-0 in WAC play, one would think that Utah State is the clear favorite to keep the momentum up and win the conference this year.

Then you realize that each of those five conference wins came against the bottom five teams in the standings and things get a little less impressive. Especially since only one of those five was a convincing victory, while another required some serious late-game heroics for the Aggies to pull it out.

Now the time of reckoning has come for USU. This is where we'll start to really figure out what this team is made of. Thursday is the first meeting between Utah State and New Mexico State of the year, followed up by a Saturday trip to Denver. If this year's squad truly is a better road team than they are at home (which has seemed to be the case), it's time to really show it. This is a trip that it's doubtful any WAC team will sweep this season. NMSU has the talent to surprise most teams on any night and compete, while Denver is just talented and well-coached.

Aside from being good on the road so far, this Aggie team has seemed to play relative to its competition this season. Whether it's playing down to let San Jose State and Seattle give them fits, or playing up to compete with a Saint Mary's team who, in hindsight, looks like they should have demolished USU pretty handily. 

Now, I'm all for adjusting on the fly, but playing to your competition can get really risky, and eventually one is going to slip away from you. Idaho almost was that game. San Jose State and Seattle weren't far off either. It's something we saw a little bit of with USU football 2009-2011, eventually resulting a few losses that the team just shouldn't have had. But as they all grew, they realized they had the power to control games from start to finish in 2012, and they did.

I'm hoping that this basketball team gets to that point, ideally this season rather than next year. Hell, maybe they've just gotten bored with all the cupcakes on the schedule and are excited to have a reason to play hard once again. Or maybe they just thrive on the pressure and sense of urgency.

Either way, this weekend is where we really start to learn what this team is made of. If they go 0-2, we'll have a steep, but achievable climb to the WAC title. A 1-1 split is still promising, and likely would have USU still in the driver's seat for the regular season crown. And if the boys see the sweep dance on Saturday night, there's no excuse for not bringing home the trophy come March.

14-1 is nice right now. Get it to 16-1, and we'll finally know for sure that we've got something really good on our hands.