COLUMN: Aggies look to new beginning
Just like that, it’s all over. Just like that, basketball season ended with only the fourth loss suffered all season. Just like that, a school-record 31st win fell just short of happening in the first round of the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years. Just like that, the best senior class in Utah State history have had the books closed on their playing careers.
This is where college sports start to really sting. Aside from all the immediate sting from the loss to Kansas State, the fact that USU was horribly under-seeded for the tournament and how Thursday was one of those games where Tai Wesley seemed to get a foul called on him any time he even breathed on an opposing player; this is also the end of one hell of an era for Utah State basketball.
Even though player turnover is one of the fundamentals of college sports, it just has a different feel than normal with this current class. In Stew Morrill’s 13 years at Utah State, only three players have been four-year starters. Tyler Newbold and Tai Wesley are two of those, with the third being the school’s all-time scoring leader Jaycee Carroll. Pooh Williams is joined by only Tony Brown, Spencer Nelson and Nate Harris as other players who been starters for three seasons.
In other words, all of the players mentioned above represent a who’s who of Utah State basketball over the last 13 years, and that is all without even yet mentioning Brian Green, Nate Bendall or Matt Formisano. All three of those players are responsible for their own epic moments in recent USU basketball history whether its Bendall’s domination in the WAC Tournament championship game this year, Green’s record-setting shooting performances from behind the 3-point line or Formisano’s game-winning basket back in the 2008-2009 season that seemed to be the first real instance of swagger demonstrated by this senior class.
Safe to say, things are definitely going to have a very different feel to them next year without the unprecedented continuity that Aggie fans have seen in this program throughout the past four years.
Not to get all Semisonic on everybody, but every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. For the first time in years now, there are going to be multiple new faces in the starting lineup. For the first time in three years, a WAC championship Utah State doesn’t seem like an overwhelming certainty from day one of the season.
After two-straight season’s of returning four starters each year, USU gets to experience the flip-side of that, returning just one starter from this season. Yes, that starter is Brockeith Pane, who as of right now looks like a strong candidate for WAC Player of the Year next year, but it still leaves a lot of questions to be answered.
Even though he eventually landed behind Bendall in the rotation of big men this past season, Brady Jardine showed at the start of the year that he is more than capable of producing at a high level starter’s minutes. Through the first seven games of the season, each of which Jardine started, the junior big man averaged 10.4 points and 8.8 rebounds per game. In comparison, Bendall’s season averages were 6.5 points and 5.8 rebounds per game. And although Bendall was playing through injury for the entire year, Jardine’s games as a starter included the two toughest games of the year on the road at BYU and Georgetown.
Aside from Pane and Jardine though, the 2011-2012 Aggies look to be loaded with questions. And much like every other season, Stew Morrill will provide the answers to those questions. It might not be another 30-win season next year, but who’s to say that’s out of the realm of possibility?
Next season will probably be a struggle at times, but the 2006-2007 team had plenty of star-power to replace as well, with fewer pieces to fill the voids than next year’s team appears to have. And anybody who remembers that 2007 team will tell legendary tales of the games they won off of heart alone, rather than size, strength or talent. In other words, it’s time for a new generation of Aggies to take their shot at WAC dominance.
Obviously with another first-round exit in the books, the rest of the nation is still waiting for the Aggies to prove something to them, regardless of how brutally the Aggies have run a train on the rest of the WAC. This last generation of now-graduating players proved three years ago that they owned this conference, so for the first time in a long time, USU has something to prove to the WAC too.
Matt Sonnenberg is a senior majoring in print journalism. Matt is an avid fan of Aggie athletics and can be found on the front row of every home football and basketball game. He can also be reached at matt.sonn@aggiemail.usu.edu.