The start of something big
Some might find it shocking that at one point in its basketball career, Utah State lost to the Deaf and Blind School.
FINAL
Utah Agricultural College 19
Deaf and Blind School 22
The year was 1905, only the second season in which Utah State (known as UAC at the time) had a men’s basketball team.
And in all reality, the loss wasn’t that bad. The Deaf and Blind School fielded a pretty solid team for the times. The sport was invented only 14 years earlier.
Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian-born physician and minister, came up with the game in Springfield, Mass., in 1891 to give young men something to do during the cold New England winters, according to Wikipedia.com.
The sport spread throughout the rest of the country via YMCAs over the next decade, although the organization soon discouraged the game because the rough play and rowdy crowds contradicted the YMCA’s primary mission, also according to Wikipedia.
The game didn’t arrive at USU until 1902. However, according to a master’s thesis by William Schraegle in 1985 titled “Weathering the Constant Storm: A History of Utah State Athletics,” the first basketball club on campus wasn’t what anyone had expected.
“Oddly enough, this venture, when contrasted with the directives of the Athletic Committee: ‘The encouragement of a spirit in favor of hardy, manly sport,’ the first basketball team was comprised entirely of women,” Schraegle’s thesis stated.
The venue was also nothing like anything seen today. The first intercollegiate basketball game in USU history was played in a gymnasium on the third floor of Old Main – a women’s game between the Aggies and the now-defunct Brigham Young College, a school located where Logan High School is now.
Men’s basketball started in 1904 with its first game also coming against BYC. It was a 35-4 trouncing by the Aggies’ cross-town rival.
With the locker rooms located in the basement of Old Main, employees in the building became annoyed at seeing athletes run through the halls in their gym clothes, so in 1912, the Thomas Smart Gymnasium was built at what is now the new Student Living Center next to the Taggart Student Center.
Dr. John Worley, the head physician at USU for 42 years who also grew up in Logan, said he saw his fair share of Aggie basketball games in the Smart Gym.
“At that time, there was a jump ball after every made basket,” he said. “There was a track that ran around the top. The floor squeaked and there were soft spots and weak spots, but it was a great atmosphere.”
He said the gym couldn’t hold more than 1,500-2,000 people, but it was always a packed house.
“It was hard to get a seat,” Worley said. “They would stomp on the track when they played the Scotsman. You’ve never heard ‘Show me the Scotsman’ like it was in the Smart Gym. I thought the track was going to fall through the floor.”
The Gym couldn’t last forever though. In 1937, the Salt Lake Tribune said, “The floor is about as desirable for a fast game of basketball as the loft of an old barn,” according to Schraegle’s thesis.
So instead of scheduling games at Logan High School, the school received a $135,000 bond to construct a fieldhouse “with one of identical appearance at the U of U,” Schraegle stated.
The Smart Gym was torn down after damage from an earthquake in 1971, but the Fieldhouse still stands at the corner of 700 North and 800 East.
Worley said the venue sat up to 4,000 fans and saw some great games during its time. Aggie all-American Wayne Estes scored a single-game, USU-record 52 points in the Fieldhouse Dec. 30, 1964. Estes also broke the USU career scoring record by scoring 48 points in the Fieldhouse Feb. 18, 1965 – the same night he died from touching a downed power line.
Worley said he also remembers a brawl between USU and BYU players.
“They started it,” he said. “Afterwards, they called us ‘the heathens up north,’ but they were calling our black players names.”
The 10,270-seat Spectrum wasn’t completed until the 1970 season.
The basketball team isn’t the only sport on campus that has played in a variety of venues. The football team started on what is now the Quad, then moved to Adams Park. Then a stadium was built where the HPER Building now stands in 1926, before the current Romney Stadium was built in 1968.
But in order for the basketball team to stay competitive, it needed more than a nice place for its fans to sit; it needed to join a conference.
In 1905, USU joined the Utah Basketball League with other in-state teams. Then in 1914, the Aggies joined other Utah and Colorado schools in the Rocky Mountain Faculty Athletic Conference, where they won their first conference championship in 1916.
USU would remain in that league until 1938 when it joined the Mountain States Conference.
Worley said the RMFAC was the last conference that included Utah, BYU and USU at the same time.
“BYU and Utah didn’t want us in the Western Athletic Conference with them,” he said. “They wanted what happened to us. We deserved to be in. They have excuses, but they could have got us in.”
But despite the conference affiliation, USU didn’t start playing a truly national schedule until the 1930s. Up to that point, each year the Aggies faced teams that would make fans today scratch their heads.
Games against athletic clubs, local businesses and wide variety of local high schools made for an entertaining schedule and some inexplicable losses.
Throughout history, the Aggies had a few somewhat embarrassing losses. In 1909, the team lost 26-17 to Salt Lake High School. In 1916, the team got pounded 52-14 by the USU faculty. And the Aggies are 0-3 all-time against the YMCA, including an embarrassing 57-14 loss in 1910.
However, the Aggies did escape with a 69-49 win over the Piggly Wiggly of Logan in 1932.
After USU started taking its schedule more seriously, the team started to see results. In the 1938-39 season, the Aggies qualified for their first NCAA tournament under long-time coach Dick Romney.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Since that year, USU has qualified for postseason play 23 times and has an all-time record of 1,324-966 in its 102-year history.
Under current head coach Stew Morrill, the Aggies have won at least 23 games in each of the last seven seasons – the first such streak in USU history.
Who knows where the team will be in another 100 years.
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu