CIT, basketball season, and spring football

Well its been a little less than a week since USU Men's basketball team has stopped playing.  The CIT was a nice consolation prize for an otherwise uninspiring season.  The team played some of its best basketball and it really seemed like they were clicking.  I missed a the Oakland game where Stew Morrill team put up 105 points in regulation, in the post season, and against a good D1 team.  The crazy thing about that game is that wasn't even the highest shooting percentage they had that season.  That belonged to a game against Fresno State.  Anyway I championship however was not meant to be: the Aggies choked away a six point lead with five minutes to go and all the momentum.  Which continues a trend this year of Aggie Sport's not being able to consistently finish games.  I remember thinking during the game against Mercer that Chaz Spicer isn't going to walk through that door in a uniform again and make the game winning shot.  Pane still got a good look and I thought the shot had a chance but it just wasn't meant to be.   

The Season

Terms you could use to talk about this season include inconsistency, heart breakers, roller coaster, disappointing, and fun.  Now I know most people won't agree with the last one.  This season still was a lot of fun especially considering we lost five games in the Spectrum this year.  I'm a junior and had only seen us lose once before at home in the seasons I've been here.  Our youth showed at the beginning of the year especially with losses to such teams as Pacific and Texas A&M Corpus Cristi.  The saddest thing was at those point in times a fan base that was so used to winning was grumbling about how only one post season victory in Stew Morrill's tenure at Utah State had caused a lack of good recruits and were complaining about the losses we had suffered.  I used the word disappointing in my description of the season because of how disappointing the fans were this year.  The Spectrum was never filled the second half of the season.  We looked like a school of fair weather fans to me.  The magic was gone (I know the blunder by the school really killed it http://www.usufans.com/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16881 ).  Now there are plenty of excuses out there but the haunting thing about this year was the empty seats I saw in big games. We had three almost season changing road wins: Wichita State, Miss St., and Nevada but came up short each time.  

Why was this season still fun for me tho?  I still got to see us beat BYU, Keysian Reed can dunk, Medlin can have some ridiculous games, and my ears hurt a lot in the CIT championship game.

Spring Football

I have been only able to attend one practice so far this year but I noticed a few things:

• Jeff Manning while fresh off the mission has a great arm and will solidify us in the QB position.  You can tell hes fresh off the mission and his footwork in the pocket didn't look great but his throwing motion was good
• Chuckie Keeton looked good but I never noticed the wind up in this throwing motion.  I love him but that kind of scares me.  It just projects the ball so much
• Kennedy looked good and looks like he will be able to play like he did last year.
• The special teams looked alright.  It was their first real practice so its understandable that they weren't great.  There was one really bad field goal and some punts looked terrible and some looked absolutely beautiful.
• Also I love Chuck Jacobs, I think were going to to see him get a lot more receptions this year.
• The running backs looked great in what appeared to be a variation of the Oklahoma drill.

Overall it was a nice practice to watch and I'm excited to catch another one soon and focus on some other things at the practice.