Utah State is favored to win the Big West Conference in basketball, according to all the early polls.
Coach Larry Eustachy seemed almost relieved Saturday night when his Aggies struggled mightily to defeat Simon Fraser of British Columbia 67-52 in a season-opening game in the Spectrum.Eustachy seemed relieved because the game showed that, as he's been saying, the Aggies have a long way to go before they're a championship team again.
In Saturday's season opener, they looked closer to the Ags of two seasons ago than last year's title team.
Eustachy's been wanting to say, "C'mon folks, we're in the formative stages. We're not a powerhouse. We're going to have to realize it's going to take us a while to get where I want to be. I have to inform our fans we're overrated now," Eustachy said, emphasizing USU had only eight scholarship players available because of injuries, redshirts and early dismissals from the team).
This game pretty much said all that for him.
"We still have a lot of work to do," said last year's Big West MVP Eric Franson.
Eustachy, however, wasn't at all discouraged. "We're as good as we can be right now," he said.
USU, despite progress at the just-about-all-new guard line, made almost as many turnovers as the Canadian team and 22 fouls, 13 the second half, exactly equaling the B.C. Boys. Both had 20 free throws; USU missed 12.
But the Clansmen played Friday night in New Mexico, as coach Scott Clark said, "That really slowed our guys."
Defensively, the Ags were better than when they lost an exhibition a week earlier to Son's Blue Angels 102-99, but on offense, there was little organization, especially when Silas Mills fouled out with his fourth personal and a double technical on him and Clansman Sean O'Brien with almost 16 minutes left in the second half.
Mills still was USU's top scorer with 17 points on 6-for-8 shooting and tied Franson and S.F.'s Novell Thomas with seven rebounds. Thomas, a 6-foot-1 guard, was the scoring leader for the night with 19. Franson got 15.
"Our offense was a little out of sync," said Franson, who shouted at teammates a couple times to execute better. "We had trouble running our set plays. When we don't execute, it's frustrating," he said.
Still, Eustachy said, "some players stepped up." He liked point guards Duane Rogers (six assists from a guy who hasn't played in a year and a half) and Sam Turks (2-for-2, six points in 10 minutes). Myron Simms had an 11-straight-point/two-steal explosion (13 points overall) in the early second half to help the Ags power up from a 38-23 intermission to a 54-30 lead, and they pushed it to 24 a moment later.
Late in the game, the Ags began fouling - Eustachy blamed early season fatigue - and the Clansmen cut a 56-32 lead to 10 at 61-51 before fouling Franson and Rogers.