In All Honesty: The Aggies so far

The 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.

Sign of the game contest

We couldn't decide who should win the sign of the game at Energy Solutions Arena so we are leaving it up to the readers. There is a poll here on the blog with our nominees and we'll let voting decide who wins the title and the Refraction t-shirt.

BYU issue

Here is our BYU issue. In case you didn't know we at the Refraction don't like BYU very much. So here is our most immature and pissed off issue ever. Hope you enjoy it

http://www.usustats.com/refraction/Vol_2_Issue_5_-_BYU.pdf

Season Preview Issue

Please check it out:

http://www.usustats.com/refraction/

Montana State-Northern's student section

Seriously, you can't make up stuff like this...

This is a picture taken directly from MSU-Northern's athletics website advertising their student section as if this is something to brag about.

Notice there's less than a dozen people standing, little kids in the front row, and plenty of other people looking like they're there against their will. Also worth noting that I just correctly used all three spellings of "there, their, and they're" in the same sentence. Grammar kudos to me.

I also am entertained by the fat guy on the far right of the photo. He looks ready to fight/gut-slam somebody there.

Stew opens first practice with ceremonial ripping in half of a phone book… just to show who’s boss.

When USU began official team practices on Oct. 17, head coach Stew Morrill wasted no time in using scare tactics to establish his dominance as the man in charge of things. Just prior to practice, Morrill walked out of the tunnel to the basketball court carrying only a copy of the yellow pages and his whistle.
“He came out, blew the whistle, and just pointed to get everyone’s attention without saying anything,” said freshman Jaxon Myaer. “He just paced back and forth for a minute or two staring everybody down along the way.” Morrill, still having not spoken a word to his team, presented the phone book for all to see, promptly tore it completely in half, and tossed the two halves behind his head.
“This wasn’t a weak-ass Cache Valley sized yellow pages either,” Myaer said. “This was a big one, probably from Salt Lake or something.”
After the pieces of the phone book hit the floor, Morrill soaked in the looks on the team’s faces for about 12 to 15 seconds before simply saying, “You’re next.”
“You could see the fear in the faces of all the players,” assistant coach Tim Duryea said. “Stew doesn’t mess around with this stuff.”
After 20 or 30 seconds more of stunned silence by his team, Morrill then blew his whistle and began the day’s practice as usual.

Logo Contest

Dear friends of The Refraction,
Hope you all have enjoyed the offseason, but season 2 of The Refraction and more importantly the 08-09 Aggie basketball season is just around the corner.

We at The Refraction are offering you, the loyal fan of The Refraction an opportunity to design a logo for us. If this is something that interests you, get on your photoshop or get out your crayons or whatever and draw us up a logo and send it to the_refraction@hotmail.com . The contest will run until the 17th at which point we will pick a winner from the submissions.

Submissions should:
Include The Refraction name on the logo
Look Cool
Be something that could theoretically be put on a shirt
Be Aggie Blue and Fighting White but also work in black and white
Not include any trademarked logos of Utah State University

The winning submission will win:
The awesomeness of having their logo picked
Something to put in your portfolio
A shirt with your logo on it
Respect from The Refraction staff

Hope to see a lot of cool submissions and we'll see you in 32 days for the first game of the season!

-The Refraction staff