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Show Friday, Dec. 2, 2011 Page 8 FridaySp0Ft Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.utahstatesman.com TouchBase Basketball dealt rare home loss AggieSchedules BY TYLER HUSKINSON Football SATURDAY, DEC. 3 USU at NMSU, 1:30 p.m. Men's Basketball SATURDAY, DEC. 3 USU at Pacific, 8 p.m. Hockey FRIDAY, DEC. 2 USU at Colorado State SATURDAY, DEC. 3 USU at Northern Arizona SUNDAY, DEC. 4 USU at Northern Colorado Women's Basketball FRIDAY, DEC. 2 USU at Montana State, 7 p.m. Aggies vs. Aggies in NM BY TAVIN STUCKI sports editor It will be all Aggies all the time as Utah State faces New Mexico State in Las Cruces, N.M., Dec. 3. NMSU comes into the game 4-8, just 2-4 in Western Athletic Conference play and has only pride to play for. Utah State is 6-5 and 4-2 in the WAC. USU has already accepted an invitation to a bowl game and has all but tied up the runner-up spot in the conference with the win over Nevada Nov. 26. USU senior wide receiver Stanley Morrison said his team cannot look too far forward to the bowl game. "You can't just dwell on the win from this weekend," Morrison said. "We have to keep grinding, keep practicing and go out there and try to win. You can't slack off just because we reached our goal of being bowl eligible." All things considered, there isn't much left to play for from either Aggie football team, but Utah State head coach Gary Andersen said he wants to beat NMSU to get his team's seventh win this season. "It's important to get seven wins," Andersen said. "It's something that hasn't been done here for 32 years." The last time the Aggies achieved so many wins during the regular season was in 1979. Utah State will rely on junior running back Robert Turbin, who has 1,318 yards and 19 rushing touchdowns this year. The 5-foot-10 California native needs just one rushing score to break the alltime career rushing touchdown school record, which he is currently tied with Aggie great Abu Wilson at 40. Turbin will be taking handoffs from junior quarterback Adam Kennedy, who was given the starting spot when freshman Chuckie Keeton was injured earlier this season. "Adam's done a great job," Andersen said. "He's won four games in a row." Kennedy has seven touchdowns to three interceptions since coming on in the first half of the Hawaii game Nov. 5. Andersen said anything could happen Saturday. "They're just like everybody in this league," he said. "It's going to go right down to the wire." See FOOTBALL, Page 10 assistant sports editor The third-longest home winning streak in the nation ended Wednesday night. Sophomore forward Chris Udofia scored 15 points, hitting 5 of 8 field goals, to lead the Denver Pioneers past the Utah State men's basketball team 67-54 at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum. Senior forward Rob Lewis scored the first bucket of the game, an easy layup off the tough-to-guard Princeton system Denver uses, and the Pioneers dominated USU the remainder of the game. "Well, Denver put on a clinic tonight, I thought that they were really good," USU head coach Stew Morrill said. "You could see their experience, you could see their system working and they took advantage of our miscues and our inexperience. They just dominated us, we got outplayed, we got out-coached; we just got out-everything-ed tonight." USU worked on scouting Denver's system for three days in practice. However, the Aggies struggled immensely to not only replicate the system, but to understand, defend and play against the system. "It's hard to simulate in practice with a scout team that can't run the system nearly as hard and nearly as well as they do," Morrill said. "We tried to do drills for it and we still got carved up." USU tied the game and took a one-point lead in the early minutes of the game, but Denver used a 20-4 run over a 10-minute span to put USU in a deep hole. Denver led 31-14 before USU showed some life and responded with a run of its own. Freshman Jordan Stone checked in and made an immediate impact with his size. Stone hit a pair of free throws and got a put-back layup, which sparked a 15-3 Aggie run to end the half. Sophomore guard Preston Medlin scored 13 points, while senior forward Morgan Grim finished with 11 points and eight rebounds. The Pioneers shot 52 percent from the field and 40 percent from the 3-point line. Denver finished with 16 assists, while the Aggies only finished with six dimes. "They did a really good job of moving the ball and sharing the ball," senior guard Brockeith Pane, who finished with 12 points, said. "They shot the heck out of the ball. They did a very good job of going to the 3-point line and we didn't do a very good job of keeping our man in front of and those guys have been in the system for a long time, and they did a great job in it. They deserve all the credit tonight." After a two-game road trip, USU was expecting a packed, loud Spectrum, but that was not the case. USU students were silent for the first three minutes of the game and the Spectrum was filled to half capacity at most. "Just seeing the Spectrum, how it was against BYU and then you come back from a two-game road trip and not having our fans here kind of hurt us. I know it hurt me. "We didn't have our sixth man with us," Morrill said. "It's kind of hard when you don't have your sixth man with you, but five guys on the court and 11 guys on the bench and four or five coaches who all want to win. We've just got to get better. This has got to be a learning experience." Morrill said the Aggies will get better despite the tough loss. "It is tough, we have been good in this building. It's tough to have a showing like that," he said "All you can really do is go back to the drawing board tomorrow and try to get better, and that is what we will do. "It's not time to panic, it's time to get better," he added. sports editor For the first time this season, the Utah State hockey team skated off the ice with a loss. The Aggies fell to the Arizona State University Sun Devils 6-1 in their first game of the Colorado tournament Thursday night. Utah State head coach Jon Eccles said while they came out strong, the Aggies struggled with their mental game. "We weren't focused," Eccles said. "We were relying on our past achievements and thinking that just because we stepped on the ice, we should win without having to put the effort in." Eccles said even though Utah State had more talent, the team was unable to spark its offense. "There were a couple of players that were doing everything they could," Eccles said. "Some players on their lines weren't playing with the same intensity, which was frustrating." The No. 2 Sun Devils gave Utah State its toughest test of the season. They dominated the No. 1 Aggies in their zone and made some noise in the national championship race. "Looking at the whole game," Eccles said. "They outplayed us, they out-shot us — they wanted the puck more." Early on, the Aggies controlled the game. "In the first few minutes, we pretty much dominated them as far as keeping it in their zone and skating with the puck," Eccles said. The Sun Devils struck first, picking up an early goal in the opening period. Aggie forward Jeff Sanders did his best to keep his team in the game by picking up a power-play goal soon after, but ASU answered with three more goals in the first. "They came prepared to win," Eccles said. "They came to leave it on the ice." Arizona State scored twice more before time ran out. While the Aggies' play wasn't pretty, Eccles said he did see some good effort from his team. The Aggie blue line, composed of forwards Matt Hamilton, Cooper Limb and Chase Allington, has recently hit a hot streak. The line is expected to continue its success Friday, despite this loss. "Our blue line played the best as a unit," Eccles said. "There was very hard skating, they were always attacking; they had a lot of opportunities." The Aggies will continue their weekend action with matchup with No. 3 Colorado State on Friday. - meredith.kinney@aggiemail.usu.edu - tavin.stucki@aggiemail.usu.edu ty.d.hus@aggiemail.usu.edu USU JUNIOR CHARLEY RIDDLE prepares to hold up instructions for other students just before protest. CODY GOCHNOUR photo Arizona State hands hockey first loss of season BY MEREDITH KINNEY sports senior writer UTAH STATE HOCKEY FELL to Arizona State 6-I in Colorado Thursday night for its first loss in the 2011-12 season. KIMBERLY SHORTS photo BY TAVIN STUCK! Silence. That's what was heard in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum in the moments following the Utah State-Denver tipoff, which eventually ended in a USU loss 67-54 Wednesday. It was the first home loss since Dec. 5, 2009, snapping the third-longest home winning streak in the nation. In protest, the Aggie student section sat down and did not cheer while 180 seconds ticked off the game clock. At the 17-minute mark, they began chanting "Let's go, Aggies." Contrary to initial chatter on social media speculating the cause of the protest, the sit-down was not in response to a controversial apology letter written by USU President Stan Albrecht after the BYU game Nov. 11. ASUSU's Athletics Vice President Ryan Baylis said fans definitely crossed the line by heckling Cougar forward Brandon Davies. "It wasn't pre-planned about the apology, it was just about the events of that night," Baylis said. "I think (the apology) was kind of in the back of everyone's mind." Charley Riddle, a junior majoring in biology who sat on the front row during both games, said the BYU game had nothing to do with the actions of spectators in the student section Wednesday night. "For the most part, I think most students got over the apology letter like two days later," Riddle said. It wasn't until they started enforcing all these rules with what we could and could not say." Riddle said the real reason for the protest was because an event staff employee was demanding the students adhere to new behavioral rules. Utah State Athletic Director Scott Barnes told the Utah Statesman in a phone interview Thursday that the long-time event staff employee had suggested some things to the students who then confused it to be policy change. "Our facilities director asked him to go over there and talk to them about the usual," Barnes said in regard to a typical pregame reminder of respectable conduct. "He added to that and sort of demanded that they not do certain things. Those aren't the things we are legislating at all." Jake Frisby, a senior majoring in interdisciplinary studies and front-row spectator, said the usher told students they were not allowed to chant "stupid" or you suck" after an opposing player turned the ball over or committed a foul, which the student section largely adhered to. "Apparently it was just this guy making stuff up," Frisby said. "He made it sound like even if it was basketball oriented we couldn't even say anything negative to an individual. We just had to cheer for our team — we couldn't point, we couldn't lean over the rail." In conversation, Frisby and Riddle explained that the usher told students punishments would include ejection from the game, ID-card confiscation, making the first five rows off limits to students and possible arrest for those who dispute new policies. Barnes also said he has spoken with the event staff employee to make sure something like this never happens again. "It's unfortunate that the usher's comments sort of went viral in a very short period of time," Barnes said. U S. Denver played a solid four-and-a-half minutes to begin the second half, building a double-digit lead again courtesy of a 12-4 run. USU did not cut the lead below double digits the remainder of the game. "We knew they were a good team," Medlin said. "I just think we made simple mistakes that gave them some threes and back-door layups that we weren't supposed to give up." The Pioneers hit eight 3-point attempts and scored 28 of their 67 points inside the paint. Denver's deliberate style limited USU's possessions and the Aggies were not able to make each possession count. "Give them all the credit that they deserve," Morrill said. "They have a bunch of seniors that are tough and physical who can shoot it. They have a very good system Usher's miscue sparks protest |