New Aggies to handle the rock
Tuesday’s release of the Western Athletic Conference’s preseason polls and all-WAC teams had no shortage of respect for Utah State. The Aggies were picked to win the conference yet again, while senior forward Tai Wesley received first team all-WAC honors to go along with being named the preseason Player of the Year.
The accolades didn’t stop with Wesley however, as fellow seniors Tyler Newbold, Pooh Williams and Nate Bendall all found their names on the all-WAC second team. Arguably well-deserved honors for the players that make up a team that has gone a dominating 14-2 in WAC play each of the past two seasons.
Missing from the all-WAC teams however, is a player that earned such honors each of the past two seasons in former point guard Jared Quayle, who represents the lone departure from Utah State’s starting lineup.
Enter Brockeith Pane.
Pane, a transfer from Midland Junior College, has already began his career at Utah State with a bang, named by the media as the WAC’s preseason Newcomer of the Year. In other words, all of Utah State’s projected starting five has earned all-WAC honors, even one who has not yet played a game for the Aggies.
Pane is one of three players, along with freshmen James Walker and Leon Cooper, battling for minutes in replacing both Quayle and fellow departed point guard Jaxon Myaer. While official team practices have only been going on for a week, Pane has apparently lived up to expectations that were already high, given his past experience playing for the University of Houston as a freshman during the 2007-2008 season and a season at Midland in which his team was ranked as the No. 1 junior college team in the nation for much of last season.
“He’s just been everything as advertised so far,” assistant coach Tim Duryea said. “He’s been really good. Tremendous effort in practice every day, making a lot of plays for other people.”
Pane averaged 6.3 points per game during his freshman season at Houston, followed up by 12 points per game a year ago at Midland, but when asked what his game primarily entails, Pane’s first personal claim to fame is his defensive game.
“Using my size, using my body, putting pressure on their point guard and making it hard for them to run their system,” Pane said of his defensive expectations of himself.
Duryea said he likes what he has seen from Pane thus far in working with starters and fellow standout defenders Newbold and Williams.
“Defensively, we may have the best perimeter defensive group that we’ve had in 10 or 12 years around here,” Duryea said.
The excitement of the newcomers to the point guard position is not limited to Pane, as the Aggies bring in a pair of athletic freshman guards in Walker and Cooper who are looking to make their own kind of impact this season.
Walker, a freshman from Long Beach, Calif., comes to Utah State as the top rated 2010 recruit in the entire WAC from ESPN.com’s recruiting rankings. He averaged 19.7 points, eight rebounds, 3.5 assists and three steals per game as a senior in high school a year ago. Walker will be making a transition from primarily playing the shooting guard position in high school to point guard at Utah State, much like Quayle, the player whose shoes Walker is trying to fill, had to at the start of his USU career. He has also managed to earn himself a nickname among his teammates, known now to them as “smush”.
Cooper makes his way to Logan from Sunrise Christian Academy in Wichita, Kan., where he averaged 18.3 points, 4.6 assists and 3.8 steals a game, all while shooting just under 50 percent from behind the 3-point line.
“James and Leon are kind of learning the ropes,” Duryea said of the duo. “They’re learning that college basketball is a lot different than high school basketball.”
According to Williams, he and the rest of the players who have been through at least a year in head coach Stew Morrill’s system all try and do their part to help the rookies adjust.
“We’re trying to help the new guys understand what it takes to be WAC champs again,” Williams said. “Coach Morrill demands a lot out of his players so we give them a heads up about that and tell them not to get down on themselves.”
Walker said, “I’m just trying to gain their respect because they’ve been here. They’ve done it.”
Pane isn’t expecting that transition to be easy either, despite being the lone upperclassman out of this year’s trio of point guards.
“I know there’s going to be a learning curve,” Pane said. “There’s going to be hard times and there’s going to be good times.”
With Pane the likely starter, Walker and Cooper’s battle looks to be reserve duties this season, with the possibility of a redshirt season for whoever ends up No. 3 on the point guard depth chart.
Despite inexperience, Duryea appears confident that this year’s point guards can effectively pick up where Quayle left off to add to an already stacked roster.
“We feel like we’ve recruited well at the position where we lost a very good player obviously in Jared,” Duryea said. “If everything stays kind of on course, then there’s no reason why these guys can’t be as good as they want to be and as good as any team has been here.”
– matt.sonnenberg@aggiemail.usu.edu