Friday, February 26, 2010

Aggie Bull Horn #113 - The Aggie Bull Horn Weekly podcast - Feb 26, 2010

Gabcast! Aggie Bull Horn #113 - The Aggie Bull Horn Weekly podcast - Feb 26, 2010



Hey y'all. Enjoy.

Here's what we've got for you
This week in the Jazz - Should Carlos be allowed to return and will he?
Aggie Basketball - 2 wins from a 3-peat
USU hockey - starting the ACHA tourney today
Elections at USU
USA hockey - we pick them to face-off with canada in the gold medal round.

The Jazz get back to winning ways at home

The Jazz got back to their winning ways at home on Wednesday when they beat Charlotte, one of the hottest teams in the east since January.

The Jazz, however, were not to be outdone. Utah is the best team in the NBA since January 9, having gone 18-3 over the course of the last 7 weeks. Despite the intermittent losses of personnel due to family issues, injury, and other misfortunes, the Jazz have proved their depth and continued to dominate.

By far, the high point of the last two months was the overtime comeback win against portland. The low point was the home loss to the Hawks. If the low is a loss to a good Atlanta team, then I would say the Jazz are doing just fine.

Landon

Monday, February 22, 2010

30th Anniversary of the Miracle on Ice



Happy 30th USA Hockey. This was the biggest upset of all time and the best American sports moment of all history.

Way to celebrate by beating down the Canadian team 5-3 on Sunday. You've done your forefathers proud!

We at the Aggie Bull Horn salute you.

Jazz rally from 26 down to get the OT win in Portland - Say What?!



I'm a believer. If the Jazz can win on the road, and not just win, but also come back from 26 down to send it to overtime without Okur, without Kirilenko, and without Millsap in OT, then I think the only team that will be able to stop the Jazz is the Jazz.

They are playing lights out ball right now, and I don't see that changing soon.

Go Jazz.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Aggie Bull Horn #112 - podcast Feb 19, 2010

Gabcast! Aggie Bull Horn #112 - podcast Feb 19, 2010



Here's what is on the podcast -

Fusion Radio Contest Winner announced by Kayla Harris
Coach Jon Eccles of USU Hockey on the air interview
Sounds from the USU-LaTech game
Analysis of the LaTech game.
Analysis of Wichita State Game on ESPN2
Tyler and I making idiots of ourselves and thoroughly enjoying it.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Jazz Win Again - I'll never get tired of saying that, so I repeat.



Dag. I'm so proud of the Jazz. Get Golden State tomorrow, Utah.

Utah State beats Tech, Distances itself from the rest of the WAC

Well, it's not secret - Utah State won last night yet again. This ESPN article says it all, pretty much.

There will be a great bit about this Tech game on tomorrow's show. Be sure to tune in here. (please note - the link will only work with Windows Media. If you have WinAmp or iTunes and want to use those programs to stream, please visit the radio site to watch.

My general thoughts from the game -

Pooh Williams' impact on this game was felt very, very hard. He not only scored all of his points when USU needed to score, but also shut down Kyle Gibson. Gibson went 4-18 from the field and got only 14 points. He was a virtual non-factor, a fact to which Pooh himself seemed surprised at after the game.

Brady Jardine just wasn't himself with the mask, and Stew recognized that. Hopefully he'll be a bit more back in form by Saturday.

Tech is extremely athletic. Credit Stew's brilliant basketball mind for drawing up a way for USU to win, because if it weren't for Stew, USU would be just a bunch of white guys (and Pooh and Modou) playing hoops and getting thrashed. Stew knows how to run his team, and his team trusts in the system. How many coaches would give their right arm to be able to influence their players like that. Tech's Rupp would. He was quoted as saying that his team more or less ignored the scouting report on Pooh: to never let him finish with his left, and that's what Tech did. Tech allowed Pooh to finish with his left, and now... Tech is two games behind.

And finally, Nate Bendall's rebound on the Pooh Williams missed 1-and-1 free throw for the putback and the foul was EPIC. That play, combined with the Newbold steal in transition won the game for the Aggies.

Get 'em Ags.

Landon

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Jazz Win Again - I'll never get tired of saying that.



I would hope Utah gets off to the good start after that miserable LA Lakers game last week. Good grief.

Get it done tomorrow in the Big Easy, Jazz. Put a damper on the Mardi Gras Party that went down today. Get it done.

USU Hockey Home-and-Home with BYU

Brendan MacDonald's hat trick helped USU obliterate BYU, 10-3, in the second game of a home-to-home series on Saturday night at the Eccles Ice Center.

MacDonald's first goal was also the first of the game, and it came at the 13:50 mark in the first period. Matt Hamilton controlled the puck on the left side of the BYU zone in the power play and passed it low to Kyle Soder. Soder drew the BYU defense to him, which effectively left MacDonald wide open in front of the goal. Soder split the puck between two defenders, and MacDonald one-timed it home through the legs of both the BYU defender and the BYU goaltender.

MacDonald's second goal was the goal that busted the game wide open for the Aggies. Once again on the power play, MacDonald took the pass from his linemate, Hamilton, and buried it. The goal was the first of three in a two-minute stretch in the second period that gave USU a hefty 7-1 lead and the win. Head coach Jon Eccles said he was pleased with MacDonald and USU's overall effectiveness on the power play.

"Our power play was clicking all night long," Eccles said. "They couldn't really stop us. For the most part, I was happy with the way they played. We got a couple stupid penalties again, but for the most part we cleared things up."

MacDonald's hat trick goal was icing on the cake for the Aggies. With 13:24 remaining in the game, MacDonald scored his only goal not scored on the power play. MacDonald took a pass from Kent Arsenault and went on a fast forecheck. BYU's defense couldn't recover, and MacDonald left no doubt. USU led at that point 9-1 and was able to tack on one more before time expired.

Saturday's game came in the wake of part one of the home-to-home. Friday night's game was a 9-5 Aggie beatdown of BYU at the Peaks Arena in Provo. Brendan MacDonald managed to get a hat trick in that game as well. Also notable from the Friday night game were Billy Gouthro's three assists and an unassisted Tyler Mistelbacher goal in the second period. With that goal, Mistelbacher's 40th of the season, he continued his campaign for offensive player of the year in the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) western region. Mistelbacher, a freshman, only trails UNLV's Michael Zenzola by three goals but has played three fewer games than Zenzola.

With the pair of wins, USU improves to 25-6 on the season and extends its season-long home undefeated streak to 12 in a row. USU's last home loss was against the University of Denver in last year's regional tournament. During the second game, USU clinched the season sweep against BYU, winning all six games against the rival Cougars from Provo. Eccles said he would prefer to schedule more talented teams to effectively prepare USU for the regional tournament.

"As far as being a strong match," Eccles said, "there's not a whole lot there. It was just a game for us and for the fans. We would have much rather played a stronger team to prepare us. We play Denver next weekend, and regionals are the week after DU. We want to be playing strong teams, because that's what we're going to be playing at regionals. We're not going to be playing teams like BYU."

Despite the lopsided results USU-BYU hockey has provided this year, Eccles said the series is still a rivalry as far as the teams and the fans are concerned.

"I love that intensity out there," Eccles said. "The fans love it. When the U of U, Weber or BYU comes in, it's a big rivalry. You can see the fans and how they help out, especially when they start saying, 'Hey goalie, goalie. You suck.' It's just fun to hear that stuff."

The degree to which BYU and USU hockey dislike each other was in full display in both Friday and Saturday's games. On Saturday, the Aggies were booked for 22 penalties – by far the most this season for USU. Likewise, BYU was booked for 18. The climax came near the end of the first period on Saturday when Jeff Sanders and a BYU Cougar started tussling, wrestling and pushing each other around, after a USU shot was saved by BYU's goaltender, Brent Taylor. While Sanders was venting his frustration and drawing all the attention of the officiating crew, USU's Matt Ferris took the opportunity to lightly crosscheck BYU's Tanner Billingsley, while Billingsley was off-guard. BYU's Todd Jaramillo, who was standing just behind Billingsley and had full view of Ferris's crosscheck, reacted in defense of his teammate by putting Ferris in a headlock and dragging him to the ice. The situation, obviously, did not improve from there. When all was said and done, 10 players were booked into the box at the same time for the altercation – five for BYU and five for USU.

Matt Hamilton, USU's starting center, was disqualified and ejected for facemasking in the third period of the second game. Hamilton, according to the ACHA rules, must sit out the game against the University of Denver for his actions. Also, Billy Gouthro, one of USU's three assistant captains, was given a 10-minute penalty and effectively ejected, for slashing and misconduct at the 9:31 mark in the third period.

While Eccles said he recognized the need for his team to maintain its composure, he also said much of the 22 penalties may not have been as necessary as the referees insisted.

"The ref," Eccles said, "there's probably been a bit of bad blood in the past and so he's not going to put up with any type of harassment or any type of abuse. He told us right up front, 'If you guys start doing that, we're going to start giving 2's and 10's and start kicking them out of the game. Bottom line, some of the guys couldn't quite adjust to that, so that's why they were sent off the ice early."

On a further note, I would like to take a shot at BYU Hockey fans.

With just under 10 minutes remaining in the game on Friday in Provo (Yes, I was present), a group of BYU fans began heckling an Aggie who had been sent to the penalty box. I responded on behalf of the player by yelling out, "Scoreboard!!!" So, naturally, the fans started heckling me.

First, they asserted that USU cheated. I ignored that one because of the stupidity of the argument and continued to repeat the score (9 to 4 at that point) until one BYU fan asked me if I wanted to fight him. At that point, I saw that the situation was getting a bit out of hand, so I waved him off and shut up. The BYU fan continued by asking me if USU had any other sport besides Hockey. I had great pleasure in informing him of the success our Men's Basketball team had against BYU this year. I again began to ignore him, and eventually I heard someone mutter, "You've got to have some class, man. You've got to have some class."

I bit my tongue. I was so tempted to make a strong reference to a certain former BYU quarterback who epitomizes class, but I restrained myself and bit my tongue.

Bottom line, I lost a lot of respect for BYU last weekend. A lot of respect.

I'll link my article to this post as soon as it is placed on the web.
Landon

Friday, February 12, 2010

Aggie Bull Horn - Feb 12, 2010

This is a collection of the better parts of the show today.

Included: Landon's worst dating story ever in honor of the current contest going on with Fusion. Send your horrible dating stories to fusionhd3@usu.edu or productions.fusionhd3@usu.edu. Get it going if you would like to win that free handheld HD player. It's cool. Remember, the winner is going to be declared next friday.

If you're a USU student, put "crazy date story" as the subject line. Send it in and listen!

Also, we've got super bowl recap, USU-Boise St. recap, and an NBA All-Star preview.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Aggie Bull Horn #110 - Hockey Last Weekend - DOH!

Coach Eccles
There's an awesome story I wrote about the hockey game, and it can be found here.

As for the postgame interview that I had with the coach, you can get that by listening to
<---------------- this.





Have fun, find someone to be with on V-day.
Landon

Monday, February 8, 2010

Aggie Football Recruits

A story I produced about the USU football signees.

Go Aggies! Win 6 games this year!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

The Super Bowl

All I'm going to say is that I called Peyton Manning's interception two plays before it happened. I feel rather proud of that.

Check out the highlights on NFL.com

Congratulations to the Saints and the city of New Orleans. Word to ma homies.

Landon

Jazz Win 8 straight, 10 straight at home

Ok, mark it down. I'm a believer. The Jazz if they are as good as I'm being led to believe, should give the Lakers good competition and beat everyone else on their schedule. The Jazz are playing excellent ball.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

USU-Nevada - 2010 in Stew's Cathedral - The One and Only

Normally I would put together an awesome segment of the highlights from this game, but in all honesty, I could not be in Logan until 8:20 p.m. Saturday, and by that time the doors to the building that houses the Fusion Studios had long since closed. So, fault me for this one. I don't deserve to have the responsibilities I do - my only solace is that our next show is 6 days away and by that time, this game will be very old news.

In any case, here's my thoughts from the game.

The crowd in this game was epic. Bill's Mardi Gras getup caused Babbitt to miss his first free throw of the second half, and the roof nearly flew off after Jardine blocked Babbitt early in the second. There were several opportunities in which a 3-pointer would have triggered implosion quality vibrations, but it was not to be. USU didn't even hit a 3-ball in the second half.

If the statistic that USU always wins when shooting five three-pointers were to hold steady, this game was as good as done at halftime. USU shot 6 of 11 from deep in the first half (54.5 percent) in half numero uno. The good news: the stat held. The bad news: USU missed all six of their 2nd half attempts. Credit Nevada's perimeter defense.

USU played to their unchanging game plan just like always. The only Aggie in double figures at halftime, at which point USU led 39-35, was Jared Quayle on two 3-pointers and 50 percent shooting. However, USU had 3 other players in the 6-10 range at halftime (Tai Wesley, Pooh Williams, Tyler Newbold). Compare that to Nevada. Babbitt and Johnson combined for 25 of Nevada's 35 first half points. No other member of the Pack scored more than five in the first.

USU had four players in double figures by the end of the night and one player with eight points.

Utah State continues to dominate on the assist-to-turnover ratio. After 20 minutes, the A-T ratio was 6. Yes, that's correct. At the end of the game, the ratio was 4.5 (18 assists, 4 turnovers). I don't care who you are, when you get that stat, you're going to do well.

Rebounding continued to be a huge advantage for USU. Of USU's 17 first half rebounds, 9 of them were offensive, which resulted in 8 first half 2nd chance points and 20 2nd chance points in this game. The 21 offensive boards were a season high for the Aggies.

USU got loads of points off of Pack turnovers. The POT/TO ratio was 2. I'm pretty sure that stat is not well known, because it's never used. POT/TO stands for (Points off Turnovers) divided by (Turnovers). If a team is able to get that ration to 2, it basically means the team scores on every turnover the opposing team commits - a vitality in a game like the Aggie-Pack game. Nevada gave the ball away 7 times, and USU capitalized for 14 points. Wow.

Tai Wesley came to play in the second half of this one. The Tai-phoon had 10 points in the first 6.5 minutes of the second half, at least four of came as the second-chance variety of points. He struggled in the first, but more than recovered in half number two. Tai's bucket with just over four minutes remaining stifled a Pack run that got Nevada back within single digits. Also, Tai's free throws in the final minutes all but shut the Pack down and put the game out of reach, even though he missed one.

I was sad to see Brian Green disappear during this game. Credit his recent success to make Nevada pay more attention to him during film time. As Stew said afterwards, "It was bound to happen, but we were happy to get a win out of it."

Nevada played excellent defense given the circumstances in this game - they played so well that I have to give them credit. USU's FG percentage fell from 44.1 percent to 39.7 percent in the second half. However, it didn't matter because USU had 10 more free throw attempts and 9 more 2nd-chance points. more free throw attempts.

The moment that Babbitt fouled out of the game was just about as sweet as the Winning Team-Losing Team chant. Both Tai Wesley and Stew Morrill gave Babbitt credit for the type of ball he plays and his strength of character. Still, it was good to see him choke.

And finally, Pooh's dunk at the end of the game when Nevada was in the full-court press was epic.

I'm convinced. This team will not lose another until the NCAA tournament, which is where they're going, by the way.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Aggie Bull Horn #109 - usu-idaho recap

Gabcast! Aggie Bull Horn #109 - usu-idaho recap



this is a recap of what went down at the spectrum on wednesday. It was great.

Enjoi

Landon

Aggie Bull Horn February 5, 2009

Gabcast! Aggie Bull Horn February 5, 2009



Today's final segment including lots of jokes, our super bowl picks, Aggie Ball Picks, Aggie Hockey Picks, an update on Jared's dating life, and other stuff.

Sorry about the crummy audio. I'll check the board from now on.

Thanks, guys! You know it's awesome.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Jazz Win 7 straight, 9 straight at home

The Jazz are doing great these days, and you can thank good passing, unselfish play, and a great attitude.

I would not like to be on the end of Kirilenko's block in this one, that's for sure. If AK-47 is willing to take a pay cut to stay in Salt Lake City, then Mr. O'Connor, sign him again, because he has been lights-out awesome the last few weeks. Unbelievable.

Take it to the bank - the Jazz are just 1/2 game out of 3rd in the West and are nipping at Dallas's heels.

Go Jazz.