In All Honesty: The Aggies so far
Friday, December 12, 2008 0 commentsThe Aggies come out of the fall semester sporting a 5-1 overall record and one of the most efficient offenses in the country. The Aggies are shooting a staggering 56.6% from the field which is first in the country by 3.5% which is a rather large margin. USU is 2nd in 3 pt % at 47%. Lastly Tai Wesley (77.4%) and Gary Wilkinson (76.9%) are 2nd and 3rd in individual field goal percentage. This is a long way of saying when the Aggies shoot the ball there is a good chance of it going in the hoop.
All that being said the Aggies lost in their only true test this season falling to a pretty good BYU team @ Energy Solutions Arena last week. The tests don't stop as the Aggies play their next 3 away from the Spectrum against teams they should beat, but at the same time aren't gimmes. UVU is first on the docket and have the 4th leading scorer in the nation in Ryan Toolson at 25 a game. The Aggies then travel to Southern Utah on the 17th and end the road games at Idaho State on the 20th. Idaho State is a team without a great record (2-7) but has played a murders row of pretty good teams losing 3 games in OT (including one in double OT). The Bengals also hung tight at Wisconsin (losing 58-60) and were able to upset Utah in Pocatello.
The Aggies have never been a very strong road team. Under Morrill they have been a team that gets 23+ wins a season but a majority of them come in the friendly confines of the Spectrum. So the true test of how good this team can be will be if they can win a couple games on someone else's floor. They already were able to sneak away a victory @ UCSB thanks to a Formisano put-back, if they can come away unscathed after these road trips then this team might very well be for real.
The key for this team during the road trips, and all season will be if it can mature in a hurry. Inexperience cost them a win against BYU, but they still hung in there despite a pretty horrible shooting night from the outside. If the freshman guards (Myaer and Geiger) grow up in a hurry and along with Newbold and Quayle can keep knocking down open shots it will make it tough for teams to focus on Wesley and Wilkinson down low. If all that is happening this team will be hard to beat no matter where the game is.
Lastly if this team wants to contend for an at large bid to the big dance then it has very little room for error for the rest of the season. According to rpiforecast.com the Aggies currently sit at 73 in the RPI rankings but are expected to finish around 53. Anything above 50 will get the Aggies a look come selection Sunday (if the team fails to win the WAC tourney in Reno in March) but in order to do that 5 losses is the maximum this team can afford. The Aggies must be able to defend the home court throughout the rest of the season and only suffer a few trip ups on the road. Figuring the Aggies will lose at least a couple on the road during conference play it makes it an absolute necessity that they don't lose any more non-conference games or it will be WAC tourney or bust.
The test begins Saturday night (December 13th) in Orem. If you are a fan of the Aggies you should do what you can to get there and help this team gain some momentum on the road.
