Prepping for the Spartans … again
The Aggies won 21 games in the regular season.
And despite what happens this weekend at the Western Athletic Conference tournament, Head Coach Stew Morrill said no one can take that away from his team.
“I am very proud of our team,” he said. “We went 21-7. We were 11-5 in our first season in the WAC. We finished second and that is a hell of a deal. Now if we go lose in the tournament, is it all for nothing? Not to me.”
The Utah State men’s basketball team will play its first round game against the San Jose State Spartans Thursday in Reno at 3:30 p.m.
It will be the second meeting in five days between the teams. Last Saturday, USU won 61-58 in the regular season’s final home game in the Spectrum.
Morrill said the quick turnaround is rare.
“It is unusual to play the same team back-to-back,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time that happened. I guess we will both be pretty familiar with each other, since we played on Saturday. Hopefully, we will know what we are in for.”
Morrill insisted that Saturday’s close game against the 6-24 Spartans was no fluke.
“I never have thought that playing San Jose State would be an easy game and our guys saw that Saturday night,” he said. “They have just lost a number of games like they did Saturday. I have said all along, at some point they are going to win one of these and they almost did on Saturday. Their record is very deceiving.”
USU enters the tournament as the No. 2 seed. The Aggies finished conference play with an 11-5 record, but are 6-3 in their last nine games. Five of those six wins have been by 10 points or less.
Morrill said that doesn’t matter.
“I have had teams go in that were playing badly and played very well in the conference tournament,” he said. “I have had teams going in playing very well and not play so well. It is a matter of how you play that week, not how you played two weeks ago or a week ago.”
As far as an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, Morrill said the critics want to make USU think they don’t have a chance.
“The only way you ever know for sure if you are in the NCAAs is if you win the tournament,” he said. “I am not saying we have to win the tournament to go the NCAAs, but it sure feels that way. I saw something this morning that had us listed as a one-bid league. That really irks me. That is what we were in the Big West.”
If history holds any precedent, Morrill said he thinks USU will do well in Reno.
“Our teams have done well in the conference tournament. Conference tournaments have been good to us at Utah State, so maybe I should feel different. We had some teams that won the conference tournament and went to the NCAAs that probably would not have if you based it on how we played during the regular season.”
If USU beats SJSU, it will face the winner of Louisiana Tech and Boise State on Friday.
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu