Pheasants fall to Florida
Competing for a shot at a National Championship, Utah State’s “The Pheasants”-an intramural basketball team-came up short last weekend in Columbus, Ohio.
They lost to a team from the University of Florida, 65-53, in the opening round of tournament play.
The Pheasants qualified for the tournament by winning the Utah State, State of Utah, and Western Regional tournaments. The National tournament held at Ohio State University was made up of 24 teams, including the winners of the seven different regional tournaments.
“The competition was much higher, said Pheasants team captain Andy King. “All of these teams were winners of their regional tournament. In Arizona we were much better than any other team. All of the teams at Nationals were pretty evenly matched.”
Another team member, Todd Nyman, agreed with King and added that the intensity from regionals to nationals was a huge difference.
“Compared to Tuscon, it was night and day,” Nyman said. “These were the best of the best from every region. You had coaches with the ties on, assistant coaches with the white boards, you had silk uniforms for players. It was pretty intense. Then you had the Utah state team with non-matching shorts, head bands, wrist bands, and fake tattoos (of the Aggie bull).”
The tournament was set up with three days of play.
The first day the teams were split into pools of four teams. After a day of pool play, the top three teams from each of the six pools advanced to tournament play.
The Pheasants played in and won three games during pool play to finish atop of their perspective pool.
The teams they beat were intramural squads from the University of Louisville (73-54), Southern Illinois (67-58) and Ohio University (59-54). By winning their pool, the Pheasants earned a No. 1 seed for the tournament.
According to King, the tournament was set up in a way where, rather than the No. 1 seed playing the lowest seed, all of the No. 1 seeds drew to see which position in the bracket they would occupy.
“Certain spots were better on the brackets, and I drew out the last pick for the number seeds,” King said.
That last pick resulted in Utah State being matched up against the highest second-seeded team-the University of Florida.
“They did the seeding a little different and we played a two seed-probably the best two seed of the tournament,” Nyman said.
Nyman also said that during the Florida game, the team didn’t play as well as they had previously played in pool play.
“We did very well in getting the No. 1 seed, and then we didn’t perform as well as we had the previous games,” Nyman said. “(Florida was) athletic and tough and good and we didn’t hang with them.”
Despite the early exit, King said the experience was worth it.
For most of the team it was their first chance to play in a real competitive tournament since high school.
“Beside a couple of us that played college ball for a year, none of us have played in a competitive tournament like that since high school, so it was really fun,” King said.
Scott Wamsley, assistant director of campus recreation at USU, said the school’s intramural program-especially basketball-will benefit from the success and publicity of the Pheasants.
“When the information gets out next year for basketball that you can go on to a state, region and national tournament, I think that will get some people excited,” Wamsley said. “It was great to have a team from Utah State out in that part of the country.”
King said most of the team are juniors and they plan on competing again next year and would love to go on another run.
Nyman, one of the team’s seniors, went as far as to say he would sign up for an aerobics class so that he will be eligible to play.
“If I have to take an aerobics class, I will, so that I can come back and vouch for the title,” Nyman said.
– sam.bryner@aggiemail.usu.edu