COLUMN: Where were all of the Utah State fans?
Fans of New Mexico’s women’s basketball team were painfully familiar with the scene unfolding in the Thomas & Mack Center on Monday in Las Vegas. The Lobos found themselves in a dogfight with USU and couldn’t find an answer for senior guard Jennifer Schlott.
Schlott, who had already dealt New Mexico two last-second defeats this season, led another late Aggie comeback to beat the Lobos by three, bouncing them from the first round of the 2014 Reese’s Mountain West Basketball Championships.
It was a thrilling victory, and it wasn’t even the most intense finish of the year for the Aggies, who repeatedly found themselves in close games this season.
So, where were the fans?
I understand the Las Vegas is quite a drive, but I don’t just mean at the conference tournament. I mean all season – one of the most entertaining seasons of basketball I’ve had the privilege of watching – where were our fans?
The Aggies battled No. 1-seeded Colorado State in the second round of the tournament and nearly pulled it off. Do USU students even know that happened?
So many of the USU women’s basketball team’s games in the Spectrum this season came down to the wire and occurred in those final seconds when momentum can mean the difference between a win and a loss. Most USU basketball fans are well aware that home-court advantage can have a huge impact on a game’s outcome.
But it didn’t. Not for the women’s basketball team. Not this year.
If anybody should’ve been eagerly anticipating the Jen Schlott show week in and week out, it’s USU’s storied fanbase. Even in a conference full of traditionally volatile student sections like the Mountain West, people respect the Spectrum.
So why are we reserving that oft-mentioned Spectrum Magic for the men?
Jen Schlott finished this season ranked No. 4 in the nation in scoring average. The Arizona native was named the Mountain West Women’s Player of the Year and captured the Mountain West scoring title in USU’s first season in the conference. She’s a big-time premier player.
Nine hundred fans attended senior night – a season high attendance for the Aggie women. The average for the season was 689.
Just for the sake of comparison, New Mexico’s women’s team averaged 5,914 fans a game. I don’t know math, but I like to think I know sports, and nearly 6,000 fans is one hell of a home-court advantage.
We owe it to our women to show that level of support. Even with Schlott gone next season, sharp-shooting Makenlee Williams will be back. Stephanie Bairstow, who ended the last few weeks of the season playing scary good, will be back. Lockdown defender Elise Nelson will be back.
Head coach Jerry Finkbeiner, one of USU’s best all-around coaches and perhaps the most underrated, will be back and looking to reload with a squad that knows it can compete with any team in the conference.
I hope for a day when our women’s team can take the court in the Spectrum and hear the deafening levels of fans that USU is so famous for, both for the team’s sake and for the fans themselves. Most everybody missed out on an incredible women’s basketball season this year – a mistake that shouldn’t be repeated.
— Logan Jones is a sophomore studying journalism. When he isn’t writing about sports, he’s upgrading his blog at mindgrenades.blogspot.com. Contact him at logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or tweet @Logantj.