PROVO — For Utah State and BYU, you might as well have just pulled the hearts out of players and coaches with a set of rusty needle-nose pliers.
All the work. All the drama. All the comebacks and remarkable moments, over. It’s supposed to end on the big stage, the Big Dance. But the dance music was pulled before bags were packed.
Aggie fans may have enjoyed one of the most remarkable conference tournament performances in school history as Utah State rocked No. 1 seed San Diego State to win the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament this past week in Las Vegas.
It was a repeat for the Aggies at this event, but this one seemed a bigger prize. The Aztecs were the nation’s only undefeated team for most of the season.
And the bandleader was senior Sam Merrill, who turned into a one-man wrecking crew in disassembling every Mountain West team he faced with big-time shots. He was unstoppable and his buckets were dramatic, including the final kill shot in the finale against the Aztecs.
This became a dream scenario for USU coach Craig Smith. His team began the season in the top 25, then struggled with a rehabbing center Neemias Queta. Even superman Merrill struggled with an injury.
At 26-8, making the NCAAs? Doing it with everything on the line in Las Vegas? In crunch time? This was big time.
And now … down south ...
You’ve got to feel for Mark Pope and the seniors on BYU’s team too, who have walked over searing coals all season to reach the dream of playing in the NCAA Tournament, only to have it canceled.
“These players have worked really hard this year. They’ve had a spectacular year so far and they’ve earned themselves an opportunity to play in this tournament,” Pope told reporters in Las Vegas after a one-point loss to Saint Mary’s in the WCC Tournament.
“They’ve answered the ring every time,” Pope declared. “They’ve been doing this their whole lives.” Pope then declared how hard his team would work to extend their “magic” season.
But then a deadly virus hit and by no fault of their own, the players are out, finished, done. No more games, no Big Dance at all.
The program has waited five years for a group to rise up and eke into the NCAAs. And this one, at 24-8 and projected to not just sneak in but be perhaps as high as a No. 4 seed based on some projections, is called off the task.
It’s a shame. Check that, it is a Shakespearean tragedy.
Few if any would have ever projected this kind of opportunity lost for the Cougars when the program cleaned out lockers last April and Yoeli Childs was headed for the NBA and coach Dave Rose retired.
Then Pope happened.
And then a string of some of the strangest things to hit the program ever in one season hit, including the vacating of games won by Rose teams, the departure of Nick Emery, Zac Seljaas’ broken foot in Italy, arthroscopic knee surgery to TJ Haws, the return of Childs, the nine-game suspension of Childs, the rehab of Dalton Nixon’s shoulder only to miss the end of the season with a double sprained ankle, the broken finger of Childs and an undefeated February with an upset of No. 2 Gonzaga as the best 3-point shooting team in the country.
Whew.
Whirlwind drama, meet remarkable script. Change the paper in the printer.
You have to feel for Haws. He is the lone remaining star left from the much-heralded Lone Peak Three of Haws, Emery and Eric Mika. He’s played his guts out, given his all, adjusted his roles, spilled his emotions on the floor everywhere from Maui to Malibu. Then this.
How about Childs? The NCAA punished him with a quarter of his season for not doing a job interview its exact way. But with a smile, a big heart, even harder work and indomitable spirit, he made a return and gargantuan splash. He finishes as BYU’s all-time rebounder and only player to score more than 2,000 points and rebound more than 1,000 shots. Not playing again? A misfortune for the ages.
How about Jake Toolson? His circuitous route from Arizona, enrolling at BYU, departing to Utah Valley, exiting as the WAC Player of the Year, and then returning to the Cougars in following Pope from Utah Valley is almost too good to be true. Toolson’s remarkable accuracy and leadership has been a cornerstone to plenty of drama in a remarkable season. And … the end kind of ended without an end.
On each of the staffs and rosters of the Aggies and Cougars, you could find an individual story of this season that is inspirational in its own right.
It shouldn’t have ended this way.
You want to blame somebody, but there’s nobody to blame except a microscopic bug swarming the earth looking for a host.
You can’t see it, taste it, isolate it but it has proven to hurt even those who don’t have it.
That is unfair. It is not right but it is required and necessary.
Nobody is ready for the Merrill Show to end.
Childs never even got the chance to give the NCAA a little stink eye on the way out.
There’s been plenty of blood and treasure usurped in getting to the stage where an NCAA bid was secured. It was not easy.
With the East Coast bias and Power Five conference preferences out there like a kind of iron curtain, the Aggies and Cougars punched through.
Hats off to the competitors, whose spirits never wavered but were never allowed to test it to the very end.