Basketball Men To Take On EA Sports
Utah State Men’s basketball will open up there 102nd season tonight at the Spectrum in an exhibition game versus EA Sports.
Utah State opened the 2005-06 season against EA Sports and lost 67-60. EA Sports was led by former Aggie Cardell Butler who scored 24 points.
The Aggies return two starters, Jaycee Carroll and Durrall Peterson, from last year’s team. In addition, the Aggies bring back senior forwards Chris Session and Chaz Spicer along with guard Nick Hammer and center Arvydas Vaitiekus, who redshirted last year. The team will feature nine new players.
EA Sports is highlighted by former WAC players Tez Banks, Jermaine Blackburn and Shantay Legans.
Head Coach Stew Morrill, entering his ninth season at Utah State, is not overlooking the opponent, saying, “They beat us last year and we are an NCAA Division-1 team.”
And he thinks they are better than last year.
“They got guys who are the who’s-who from different schools,” he said.
Third-year starter Jaycee Carroll knows from last year not to overlook EA Sports.
“They always have a lot of very talented individual players,” he said.
Morrill said that one of the keys to the Aggies having success in this game and in the season is for every player to handle his responsibilities, something he feels they did not do in scrimmage. After last Friday’s Blue-White scrimmage, he had this to say:
“We don’t hoop around here. We don’t just hoop. Hoop is for the YMCA. We didn’t have any responsibilities and we looked like the playground, and that’s not how we play.”
The starting lineup for tonight’s game remains unclear as Morril exclaimed that trying to choose a starter at some spots would be like a coin toss, because there are no front runners.
Point guard and center are the two spots with the most question marks because they have no returning players at either spot. Morrill was especially concerned about the center spot.
“We don’t have a veteran returning starting post, and its been a long time since we haven’t had that, so we are going to have some growing pains at all positions but certainly the post position,” he said.
Two junior college transfers, 6-foot-8 Michael Earl, 6-foot-8 Stephen DuCharme along with 6-foot-11 Arvydas Vaitiekus look to fill the center position.
The other position with out a returning player will be point guard. Again Morrill will look for help from junior college transfers, 6-foot-2 guard Kris Clark and 6-foot-2 guard Mikel Watson will share minutes at that spot.