The Aggies will never lose in the Big West, right? Don’t be so sure
Imagine this: Tony Brown is having a bad night. Dimitri Jorssen and Shawn Daniels are in foul trouble. Bernard Rock and Curtis Bobb aren’t their usual selves. And the team defense isn’t the rock it’s always been.
The Aggies lose.
Impossible, you say? USU has been on a tear unlike any other: The team has won 24-straight Big West Conference games. The closest anybody has gotten to the Aggies is the 13-point nail-biter at Cal Poly on Jan. 4. Sure the team is 16-2 overall, with losses only coming in overtime to fellow Cinderella Austin Peay University and in a tight game to Brigham Young University – a game that head coach Stew Morrill said he’ll believe USU should have won until the day he dies.
But a loss is still very possible. Just ask the coach himself.
“Somewhere along the way its going to happen to the best of teams in the league,” Morrill said at the weekly press conference.
At the beginning of the season, he promised they would not go undefeated in conference again. And he is sticking to that now.
“We were riding a charmed horse last year winning all those road games,” Morrill said. “To think that’s going to happen again is probably very sick (and) distorted.”
But many USU fans have got to think that way. And why not? Long Beach State University and the University of the Pacific have not challenged USU like they did last year. Rivals Boise State University and the University of Idaho have been cake walks (in the second half at least).
But there is trouble on the horizon: University of California at Irvine is still lurking. They’re 13-2 overall – one of those losses was to UCLA, 65-60 – and still undefeated in the Big West.
And USU has to play them twice.
Even ESPN’s “Cinderella Watch” has eyed the first match-up at Irvine on Wednesday.
“I’m not going to say ‘OK, we’re going to lose here, we’re going to lose there, we’re going to lose this many,” Morrill said.
That’s vintage Morrill – stay the course, one game at a time. And that’s what he’s telling his players.
“This is the heat of the conference season,” he said. “It’s time to focus and be ready every practice and every game.”
There will be plenty of time to relax and reflect in April, he said.
Aaron Morton is the sports editor of the Statesman.