Bradshaw peaces out

Can't even pretend like I'm not mind blown by this one, but Riley Bradshaw has left the Utah State basketball team. After a whole year of hype, tweets about excitement in coming to be an Aggie, a summer's worth of work, two weeks of practice and eight whole minutes of exhibition action, Bradshaw apparently felt that was enough of a sample size to know this wasn't the right place for him.

Speculation is that it is due to homesickness, which can be tough for any freshman. Others think it has to do with the fact that he likely wouldn't have played much at all for this year and the next one. Or it could be because he wants to play point guard, but has Marcel Davis in front of him at that position.

 - If it's homesickness, it'll pass. Logan can be a tough adjustment for an 18-year-old, but once you're here for a bit, it becomes a part of you that is impossible to leave behind.

 - If it's not playing for the next two years, look at what a year of sparse playing time followed by a redshirt season did for Preston Medlin! Bradshaw would have been a clear favorite to start at shooting guard as a redshirt sophomore after Medlin graduates, and with two years of work under Stew Morrill, he probably could have been a borderline all-conference threat by then too.

 - And if it has to do with playing point guard, well... Then maybe that one actually makes sense. I always imagined Bradshaw as more of a shooting guard, but if he has dreams of being THE guy to bring up the rock for the bulk of his college career, then maybe this is the right move.

Recapping basketball's first look of 2012-13

I can't help but speculate that at least some part of the reasoning for scrapping the Blue and White game this year has to do with some guys getting over-hyped from a good showing in a lowly scrimmage. First impressions go a long way, and those scrimmages were often the forum for those first impressions. So when a guy makes a great first impression, it's going to get talked about and that performance will often be referenced throughout a season by sites like this one.

Can't really fault Stew Morrill for wanting to keep those first impressions limited to at least an actual game situation... But that's not going to stop anyone from giving thoughts on everyone's performance!

So... Let's break down each player's performance from Friday's win over Grand Canyon, and hopefully not have to be eating any of these words in a month or two when we have a better feel for everyone. Doing it position-by-position.


POINT GUARDS
 
Tenale Roland - Among projected starters, Roland is the newest to the show, but still fit in quite nicely! Shot 3-6 from the field and 1-2 from 3-point range for eight points. Not bad for a first rodeo! He also added a Quayle-esque six rebounds, but more of the "in the right position to get the bounce" rather than the "jump way higher than everyone else" kind of boards. Not going to read too much into him only having one assist as he's still learning things. But considering the learning curve, not having a single turnover in 20 minutes of play is very encouraging!

Another Saturday, another Aggie blowout

Roadrunner shouldn't be smiling

In the last three games, USU has won by margins of 22, 34 and 31, with the most recent coming Saturday on the road at UTSA.

And once again, this one was never really in doubt. Utah State kicked off to the Roadrunners, forced them to a three-and-out, blocked their punt, and scored two plays later.

The tone was set at that point, and another blowout was on.

The Roadrunners gave themselves a glimmer of hope after a great interception of a Chuckie Keeton pass deep over the middle, which resulted in a field goal drive and only the second time USU has given up 1st quarter points this year.

Utah State's defense locked down after that though, holding UTSA to three-and-outs on each of its next two possessions, and giving up pretty much nothing throughout the rest of the first half. In the meantime, USU's offense put points on the board in each of its next SIX drives to take the game from a score of 7-3 to 41-3.

Ahhh, it's good to be back in The Spectrum!!!

It was somewhat of a new feeling Friday in The Spectrum. Amid all the excitement of basketball starting, there was still the looming excitement of watching the USU football team take the field on Saturday morning. Usually by this time of the year, football has everyone feeling down and basketball is the saving grace of excitement. Even last year, that was the case with the football team standing at a 2-5 record when basketball's first exhibition rolled around.

For once, we have the best of both worlds, and oh what a glorious time it is!!!

If anyone had suspected the success and excitement around football might suck away some of the hype for basketball, it didn't take long to be proved wrong Friday night. The Spectrum was rocking to start off the game with a student section that was easily at least 75 percent full.

The Sagebrush Spot turns one year old

One year older and wiser too!

Ok, maybe not so much on the wiser part. Either way, today marks the one year anniversary of the first post to make its way onto this fair website, setting a standard of mediocrity that still lives on today! The idea for starting this thing had been in the works for a while at that time, but finally after breaking down just how poorly Dave Baldwin's offenses had done in the 4th quarter at that point last year, it was impossible to resist. Then somehow that team became the kings of 4th quarter dramatics. But hey, if talking sports and solving problems is all this website accomplishes, that's fine by me.

So here we are, with 209 total posts, somewhere around 125,000 words typed and 105,554 total page views in year one. Also worth noting that the Utah State football team has a total record of 11-3 since SagebrushSpot.com was born (fist pump). Been a fun run so far, and hopefully gets even more fun with basketball looking primed for a return to glory this year too.

Thanks again to everyone for the support! Excited to keep this train rolling!!!

That's WACtastic!! Polls and awards are out!

The Western Athletic Conference released its preseason polls and all-conference honors today, giving Utah State just about the same level of hype that most of us expected to see.

Nabbing 15 of a 25 first place votes, the Aggies were picked as the favorite to win the conference by the media, with New Mexico State, Denver, Louisiana Tech and Idaho rounding out the top half of the projected standings.

The coaches left me scratching my head a little bit, but since five of them are total n00bs to this whole WAC thing, I suppose I can give them a bit of a pass on duffing this one. Utah State and New Mexico State shared the first place votes at an even 5-5 split, but at some point on another coach's ballot, they put USU a notch lower than the bad Aggies. So technically, NMSU gets the nod as the favorite in the coaches poll, but like I said, n00bs all over this bitch.

It's pretty much tradition at this point for a Utah State player to be picked as the WAC's preseason Player of the Year, with five of the last six preseason polls giving that nod to an Aggie by either the coaches or the media. This year's guy was the no-brainer pick with Preston Medlin getting the nod by both the coaches and media as preseason Player of the Year.

Mid-Monday links - 10/22

That's a whole lot of Links!!!

This has been way too long since doing this, and that's my bad. There's plenty of love to be spread on any given Monday, so let's go ahead and spread it!!

• Kyle Goon gives a recap on Saturday's basketball scrimmage over at the Aggieville Blog, which I guess will soon be his alone once he stops splitting carries with the old guy...
• Speaking of the old guy, Tony Jones is still absolutely killing it with USU football coverage, painful as it may be to see him tweeting about Ute basketball. But let's be honest, we all know where his heart still is with basketball in the Beehive State. Tony still cranked out two separate stories in the past few days on USU cornerbacks Nevin Lawson and Will Davis. He also recapped Saturday's 41-7 win over New Mexico State.
• Brad Rock over at the Deseret News talks about two different groups of Aggies heading in very different directions.
• Kraig Williams gives his own recap of Saturday's blowout, also for the D-News.
• And don't forget about Tavin Stucki, giving his take on the win over NMSU.
• Utah State Hockey opened its home schedule this past weekend with a pair of wins over Arizona State. Sean O'Sullivan gives the rundown for The Utah Statesman on the hockey team's 8-0 start to the season.
• The AggieZone makes its debut with a detailed recap of all the homecoming week festivities.
• Chris Cooley is a Washington Redskin once again!
• Nick Diaz was named the WAC's Special Teams Player of the Week after nailing a pair of long field goals on Saturday.
• Oscar Molina-Sanchez might be out with injury, but that didn't keep Megan Allen from telling his story for USU Athletics Media Relations.

Hopefully didn't forget anyone, but if I did, let me know via comment, e-mail or Twitter and I'll get it on there.

Enough reading this though... Go read everyone else's stuff today.