Pessimistic fans fail to stop Aggies

First of all, I’d like to send a big ‘TAKE THAT’ to all you pessimistic Aggie fans out there.

Ever since the home loss to New Mexico State, it’s just been me and about four other people in this valley that still held any hope of the men’s basketball team getting an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

And the five of us were ridiculed to no end by the rest of you!

“Dream on.”

“We’re Utah State. The committee hates us.”

“If the committee has any reason to keep us out of the tournament they will.”

“Unless you’re in a BCS conference, you have to be perfect in order to get an at-large bid.”

These were some of the many lines that were thrown at us.

But despite the manic-depressant attitude held by the USU faithful, the Aggies still got that at-large bid.

So everybody can now take all those words they harassed the five of us with and eat them.

All of the arguments as to why USU wouldn’t make it were based on the 2003-04 season when the Aggies were 25-3 and ranked No. 24 in the country, yet still did not get an at-large bid.

But the one huge fact that everyone was forgetting was that USU was still in the Big West Conference that year. With the exception of Pacific, that conference sucks.

It’s tough to convince people that you’re a good team when you’re playing the likes of UC-Riverside and Cal-State Fullerton every other game.

But the Aggies are in the Western Athletic Conference now. Not only are they in the conference, but they finished second behind nationally ranked Nevada. And they beat Nevada. And Hawai’i. And Louisiana Tech – three times.

Each of these schools was in the top-100 this season. The Aggies actually won seven games against the top third this year.

In 2004, USU only played four games against teams in the top 100 and lost two of them.

And USU was also 3-0

against other teams that made the tournament, beating Oral Roberts twice and Northwestern State (who upset Iowa in the first round).

So why the endless pessimism? While I agree that we had no business losing any games to NMSU, the losses really weren’t that bad.

Remember last season when the Aggies lost to both Idaho and Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne? Those were bad losses.

So next year, instead of trying to talk the committee out of selecting USU so we can all whine some more, let’s be a little more optimistic about the Aggies’ chances.

Talk all you want about how USU might not have deserved to make the Big Dance this year, but is there such a thing as a bad bracket that includes USU and leaves BYU at home?

Bryan Hinton is a senior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to bhhinton@cc.usu.edu.