Student support for Aggie basketball continues to dwindle

The Utah State student section’s chants are loud, their shouts are ruthless and they flood to games in thousands.

College basketball enthusiasts nationwide agree the Aggies’ student section is one of the most supportive student sections in the nation.

Or that it was, anyway.

What was once a massive student section has now dwindled to only a handful of Aggie fans. At the Mountain West tournament men’s and women’s basketball games in Las Vegas this week, fewer than 30 students were there to shout, “I believe that we will win.”

The student section has been roughly the same size for the past four years at the tournament, said Thomas Rogers, USUSA Athletics and Campus Rec VP.

“There’s not a giant turnout. It’s been probably about like this,” he said. “Sophomore year there was probably about 60-70 of us, and this year there’s maybe 20-30 of us. But back in the day there used to be thousands of Aggies.”

Rogers refers to those days, roughly between 2006 and 2011, as the “glory days” of Aggie basketball. The Aggies lost only 2 of 81 home games in those years, and held one of the longest home winning streaks in the nation until 2009. During those years, Aggie fans — and especially students — heavily showed their support.

“There was about a six-year period when you couldn’t find a seat in the student section to come to a game,” said Randy Robins, a long-time Aggie fan who graduated from Utah State in the 80s. “I mean, they were winning 25 to 30 games every year. They were so fantastic.”

Casey Hoopes, who attended Utah State from 2008-2013, said the student section was loud and aggressive.

“I was here during the good years. It was awesome,” he said. “Every time you went to a game, you could never hear yourself cheering. It was all just one sound.”

And the fan support wasn’t just at home games: Utah State students traveled to away games as well. Hundreds of students showed their support at tournaments and road games. They referred to themselves as the “Spectrum on Wheels.”

But the title didn’t fit the student section at the Mountain West Tournament this year, Hoopes said.

“It’s not what I’m used to” he said. “Not very many Aggies showed up, and I’m disappointed. I shouldn’t be able to hear myself echo through the stadium.”

The “Spectrum on Wheels” has disappeared partly because the team is winning fewer games, Rogers said.

“It’s hard when we don’t win every home game to build a fan base,” he said. “It’s simple: we do our best to market, but if we win, we get butts in seats.”

Since moving to the Mountain West from the Western Athletic Conference in 2013, the Aggies have won fewer games.

But that doesn’t mean students should stop attending, said Susanne Hansen, a long-time Utah State fan who attended this year’s Mountain West Tournament.

“Win or lose, you should be at a game,” she said. “If you want people to win, we need people in the stands to support people as well. It’s got to be both ways.”

Fan support can affect players’ performance, Rogers said.

“The atmosphere is everything,” he said. “It gets our boys juiced up and it makes it harder for the other team to play. I definitely believe that the more fans we get, the better our players will play. The more fans we get … the easier chance it is for us to win.”

Having a stadium full of Aggie fans at tournaments puts the Utah State team at an advantage, said Utah State men’s basketball coach Tim Duryea.

“(It’s a) big advantage when you feel like you’re playing a home game in the tournament,” he said.

Duryea said he’s been impressed with the team’s performance this year in the Mountain West tournament, and hopes the “Stadium on Wheels” will one day return to show its support.

“We hope in the coming years with our performance and our team’s chances in the tournament, hopefully that we can come and overtake this arena someday,” he said.

And students shouldn’t wait for the Aggies to start winning again to go to the games, Hoopes said.

“You need to come up and show your pride,” he said. “Whether they’re winning or losing or whatever, they’re your team. They need support.”

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