USU gets eighth seed in NCAA Tournament
Utah State will make its 21st NCAA Tournament appearance — and first since 2011 — this Friday as the eighth seed in the Midwest bracket. The Aggies will face the ninth seed Washington, who were the regular season PAC-12 champions.
“We’re so excited to represent Utah State the right way and obviously the Mountain West Conference in a first-class fashion,” USU head coach Craig Smith said, following the announcement. Aggies junior guard Sam Merrill, the Mountain West tournament MVP and regular season conference Player of the Year added that they are “very excited to have helped bring Utah State basketball back to where it needs to be.”
Here’s the @USUBasketball reaction to the news of their seeding in the tournament. pic.twitter.com/vGszOJE71v
— Jason Walker (@thejwalk67) March 17, 2019
This season will be the first time in program history that the team will be the chalk favorites in an NCAA Tournament game. The highest seed USU has received since seeding numbers began being assigned in 1980 is 10 (three times).
The fact that this iteration of the Aggies made history by doing something no Aggie squad, even the legendary Stew Morrill-led teams, ever managed was not lost on Smith or its star player Sam Merrill (Both mentioned it in their opening statements to the media). That didn’t change the level of disbelief based on where this team started in November.
“This has been like a fairy tale, quite frankly,” Smith said of the season.
“It’s incredible,” Merrill said. “I never would have thought we’d be at this point with how my first couple years (at Utah State) went. But, just how we’ve grown as a team and how each player individually has grown, it’s been an incredible ride.”
From 2002 to 2011, Utah State made six tournament appearances, though they lost in each of those matchups and were never higher than an 11 seed (2009). The last win in the famed March tournament came in 2001 when Morrill, in just his third season as the USU head coach, led the Aggies to a 77-68 upset in overtime against fifth seed Ohio State.
“I don’t remember (the last USU tournament win), I was probably four or five,” Merrill said. “But I do remember all the losses throughout the next few years. And those were really good Utah State teams that just, for some reason or another, couldn’t find a way to get over that hump but we’re hoping to be that team that can do that and make some noise for our program.”
Getting into the tournament was not in question after the Aggies made their bid official with a 64-57 win over San Diego State in the championship game of the conference tournament. The question then became: how high will that seed be? In the end, the players appeared satisfied.
“We wanted the best seed that we could get,” Merrill said, “Getting an eight seed was awesome.”
Intimate knowledge of Washington’s style of play was scarce at the time of the announcement. Many of the players looked up the Huskies’ roster to find out basic details about a team they are tasked with defeating Friday. The one thing everyone knew is that UW won the regular season conference title, a detail Smith puts a lot of stock in.
“Any time you’re playing a regular season champion you know they’ve got to be good because you’ve got to withstand a lot of things to do that,” Smith said.
Were the Aggies to best the PAC-12’s best team, they would likely face North Carolina, the third overall one seed and historic powerhouse. Smith, who has often spoken about his opponent’s history as a program (and was a history major in college to boot), said it would be a “cool opportunity” to face off against a blue-blood team like the Tar Heels. He is, however, focused on beating the team in front of him, as is the rest of the team.
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