JOURNEY TO THE WAC TOURNEY

(If Utah State didn't have a cheerleading program, this blog would be 5% more productive.)

... still Thursday

Men's first round

2:30 p.m. game: No. 1 Utah State (12-4, 23-9) vs. No. 8 San Jose State (4-12, 13-18)
[edit] Utah State 85, San Jose State 65

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- Congratulations to whomever answered yesterday's trivia, the name of the "Peanuts" song and its writer. No idea if it's correct. Will check that later. Still, congratulations for playing. Participation is cool. For you blog readers still on the sidelines, there will be more questions in the days to come. We're taking it to the next level, whatever that is.

The highlight of this game was the Utah State students chanting "Jaycee's winning. Jaycee's winning." Because, literally, Jaycee Carroll was beating San Jose State by himself. He had 14 points midway through the first half. The Spartans had 11. That was at least 9 or 10 minutes into the game. I think Carroll hit his first four shots and the game was pretty much over. When they double-team Carroll, it leaves the other guard Tyler Newbold open and he's already hit several 3-pointers. Utah State is going to win easily.

For someone Carroll's size to be able to score like that is incredible. He now has 10 of Utah State's all-time record, which is apparently a record itself. He scored 24 points in this game and now has 2,487 career points. He just passed Danny Ainge (2,467) and Nick Fazekas (2464) on the all-time scoring list.

As far as I can tell, here is the updated all-time WAC scoring list...

Keith Van Horn, Utah - 2,542 pts.
Jaycee Carroll, Utah State - 2,487
Danny Ainge, BYU - 2,467
Nick Fazekas, Nevada - 2464

If Utah State makes the NCAA Tournament or the NIT -- and its already guaranteed at least an NIT bid because the Aggies were the No. 1 seed -- then Carroll could realistically pass Van Horn and become the state of Utah's all-time leading college scorer. If that makes sense. Carroll will not, technically, ever be the WAC's all-time leading scorer because Utah State didn't join the WAC until his sophomore year. So yeah, my little WAC list above this paragraph is wrong. What did you expect? This is a blog.

Forty points to anyone who can come up with a correct "WAC all-time leading scorers" Top 10 list. I even spotted you the first three, and who knows, maybe Carroll's in the Top 10, even without his freshman year. This is tough just because the WAC has had so many different schools through the years, so figuring out which season guys actually played in the WAC gets downright difficult. (You realize, of course, I could walk up a flight of stairs and just look in the WAC media guide, but it's more fun to just sit here on press row and Google.)

6 p.m. game: No. 2 Nevada (12-4, 20-10) vs. No. 7 Fresno State (5-11, 13-18)
[edit] Nevada 64, Fresno State 57

The frustrating part about watching Fresno State lose to teams that aren't all that good, is that the Bulldogs play hard. I'm not saying they're fundamentally sound. Obviously, they aren't. They don't fight through screens well at all. They don't always box out or play much interior defense, but it's not because they aren't trying. They just don't have much talent.

They lost this one. Kevin Bell and Eddie Miller couldn't hit enough shots, Bell couldn't get past his defender and they couldn't stop JaVale McGee, Nevada's big man, who I'm guessing is 7-feet, 121 pounds. (Actually, he might not weigh that much.) ESPN lists him at 237 pounds, but it just seems impossible that a guy that skinny could weigh that much. He burned the Fresno State defense by spinning baseline, even against a double-team a few times. That should never happen. But alas, it did.

Fresno State's Alex Blair had a nice offensive game, making some nice moves against the taller McGee. Every time Blair has a game like that -- and it hasn't happened many times in his two years in Fresno -- the blog just thinks, "Why doesn't he do that every game?" It's something that just wasn't meant to be understood, I guess, like gravity or Ozzy Osbourne's mumbling.

(edit: Here is my column from Friday's Fresno Bee about the future of Fresno State coach Steve Cleveland.)

Here are a few of Cleveland's postgame quotes ...

"We weren’t good enough. We weren’t good enough to beat quality teams. Offensively, especially. There was never a lack of effort. There was never ... any kind of finger pointing. I’ve seen teams disintegrate because things aren’t going well. That never ever happened in 32 games, which says something about the character of these young men."

Cleveland on the future ....
"I think in a year or two we’ll be right back in the mix and competing for championships again."

Cleveland on his team missing shots ...
“That’s kind of been an issue all year.”

Cleveland on Nevada ...
“They obviously are a better team, in the sense that they’ve got depth and talent and size ...”

Well, sure, if those are the criteria you want to use to measure a basketball team; depth, talent and size. But how are the Wolf Pack players in the crab-walk or the slipper-kick? Did anyone else do the slipper-kick in grade school, where you'd take your heel out of your sneaker and see how far you could kick your shoe? Was that just a Kansas thing? Someone help me out here. The best was the kids whose parents dressed them up for school every day and they'd have to try it with nice shoes. No one ever won a slipper-kick in nice shoes. You could dislocate a hip trying to slipper-kick a penny loafer.

8:30 p.m. game: No. 3 New Mexico State (12-4, 19-13) vs. No. 6 Idaho (5-11, 8-20)
[edit] New Mexico State 73, Idaho 53

Didn't get to see a single minute of this game because I was in the media work area writing my column about the Fresno State game. New Mexico State won, obviously, because the Aggies are better and getting to play at home never hurts. Sometimes, I write from press row while I watch the next game, but it's tough to concentrate when the home team is playing and the whole place is going all 13-year-old-girl-at-a-boy-band-concert.

There is a lot of debate here at the WAC Tournament about holding this thing at a neutral site, which we'll get into later while discussing commissioner Karl Benson's State-of-the-WAC address. Last year, the conference had been made a pretty decent offer by the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas to move the tournament there. The athletic directors and coaches were all for it. But the board of directors rejected it because of the gambling factor. Then, of course, they awarded the next two WAC Tournaments (2009 and 2010) to Reno, where there is legalized gambling. Go figure.

If New Mexico State wins the men's and/or women's tournament this year, which is a real possibility, there will be an even bigger push for a neutral site in 2011. More on this later.