COLUMN: USU misses golden opportunity
Chalk it up as a missed opportunity. Saturday’s 68-51 loss at Georgetown could have been essentially a punched ticket to the NCAA Tournament for Utah State. Instead, it is a wake-up call that this team still has a little bit of work left to do before it is ready to dominate like it appears they are plenty capable of doing.
Watching the Georgetown game came with its own frustrations, most notably in the officiating. Utah State was whistled for 24 fouls to Georgetown’s 13, leading to a huge disparity in free-throw attempts between the Aggies and Hoyas. It also seemed that as soon as USU took a lead, or appeared to be on a run and closing the scoring gap, that a string of Aggie fouls shortly followed.
That right there is its own wake-up call.
The reality is, USU fans will remember from two years ago in the NCAA Tournament game against Marquette, seemingly every possible questionable call seemed to go the way of the Golden Eagles.
Now, I don’t mean to make it sound like officiating was the reason for USU’s loss to Marquette – because there were several missed shots down the stretch that had the Aggies made, they would have buried the Golden Eagles. Against Georgetown, officiating didn’t rip away a win from the Aggies, but I feel confident that were it not for a few choice calls that had some major shifts in momentum, that would have been one heck of a college basketball game from start to finish. Georgetown is still a fantastic team, which not many other teams can expect to beat in front of their own fans this season.
For school like Utah State, though, and every other non-power conference school, games where the big boys get all the calls are going to be the norm. It is what makes it so difficult for the little guys like Utah State, Murray State, Northern Iowa and even Butler to win in the NCAA Tournament. The difficulty and rarity in big tournament wins is also what makes such a thing special.
Back to this season though, and what the future holds for USU. Prior to Tuesday’s game against Long Beach State, the Aggies were sporting the No. 25-ranked RPI to go along with the 50th best strength of schedule.
Not only that, but the rest of the season looks to be much less difficult for USU. The next real test on the schedule would appear to be Nevada on Jan. 8, but seeing as how Nevada is off to a 1-7 start, one can’t help but wonder at this point if they are indeed going to put things together. Boise State is a wild card in this mix with a 7-1 record to start the year, but their strength of schedule is among the bottom five in the entire country.
At this point, the only other team that looks to even pose a minor threat to Utah State is Louisiana Tech, where the Aggies will not travel until the final game of the regular season. If ever there were a time that you were going to predict a winning streak of 23 games, this would be it.
Sure, that’s probably getting a little ahead of things, but there aren’t many challenges left in Utah State’s way for a while. If this team starts clicking on all cylinders in early January like most Aggie teams do, especially in a year where everyone else in the Western Athletic Conference besides Utah State is at least partly in rebuilding, it’s hard to think that this year’s Aggies won’t go above and beyond the level of domination they had over this conference the last two years.
Matt Sonnenberg is a senior majoring in print journalism 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