COLUMN: More Aggie greatness on tap
How’s that for a week in Utah State athletics? Wednesday starts off with the USU football team announcing a stellar signing class, which was ranked No. 1 in Western Athletic Conference by recruiting website Rivals.com. Later that night, the men’s basketball team thoroughly demolished the Nevada Wolf Pack, a program that was synonymous with WAC basketball dominance just four years ago, with the nation watching.
Then of course there was the “I’m a Little Teapot” craze, which will undoubtedly be something that is still talked about years from now, and also checked in at No. 5 on Sportscenter’s Not Top 10 for the week as well.
ESPN also talked about Utah State’s crowd as a topic on its “Around the Horn” and “Pardon the Interruption” programs Thursday, asking the question if the Spectrum indeed possessed the best crowd in all the nation. Two out of three panelists on “Around the Horn” agreed that Utah State is indeed second-to-none when it comes to college basketball crowds.
The fun wasn’t over though, as a very talented Boise State team made its way to Logan Saturday night for the first follow-up to all the media attention Utah State received from Wednesday’s Nevada game. That game was actually a game for about a minute and a half before it was very clear that Utah State had no intention of letting the Broncos even make things interesting.
All in all though, in about an 12-hour span of time, Utah State athletics propelled itself forward in three major ways.
By about noon last Wednesday, all the football signings were in, and a football program that has long been synonymous with futility suddenly boasted the top-ranked signing class in the conference.
Later that night the basketball team was embarrassing Nevada on national television and sending an authoritative memorandum to anybody who might not yet have been aware of USU’s dominance of WAC basketball over the past four seasons. The fact that this blowout was taking place against Nevada, who used to be the face of WAC basketball, was all the more relevant to where USU stands as a program right now.
Then, topping it off, the national debate over what school has the top student section in the country seemed to have reached an end as Utah State became one of the top 10 trending topics being talked about on Twitter that night.
That’s one hell of a day to be an Aggie if you ask me.
The coming weeks could provide even more positive exposure, too, particularly with the upcoming Bracketbuster game against Saint Mary’s. To call this game monumental seems so understated given the circumstance. Not only are USU and Saint Mary’s two of the premier mid-major programs in the country, and the only two ranked teams participating in this year’s Bracketbuster weekend, but Saint Mary’s is the most recent team to pull off the impossible.
For that reason alone, the Aggies should have revenge on their minds, but also the chance to get a top-50 RPI win under their belts for their NCAA tournament resume.
A win at Saint Mary’s will not come easy, but it also won’t come in the same way that the Gaels were able to beat the Aggies each of the past two years. Gone is big man Omar Samhan from the Gaels, which eliminates the biggest match-up advantage Saint Mary’s had over USU in the past.
A Bracketbuster win for Utah State this year, assuming USU maintains its winning-streak until Feb. 19, could potentially put the Aggies in, or just outside, the top 10 in the country. If that were the case, the mass-media love-fest with Utah State will only build on itself, and this program’s climb towards transcending the mid-major label like the Butler’s and Gonzaga’s of the world before us have done, might just finally come to fruition.
In other words, I dare say this season has begun living up to the insanely high expectations many had for this year when this all started.
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.