Game! Of! The! Night! 11/20/2007: Austin Peay at Utah State

 

Austin Peay (OVC) at Utah State (WAC)
Dee Glen Smith Spectrum -- Logan, UT (South Padre Island Tournament)
9:05 PM EST

For reasons unbeknownst, the last few days of The Mid-Majority have been brought to you by Office Depot. Office Depot: do you have your "easy button?" If anybody understands what those Transformers-type characters made out of office supplies are all about, let me know, they're kinda cute. But it's not my place to understand any of this complicated commerce stuff... I'm just the guy who tells you where the hot mid-major games are. This is Game! Of! The! Night! for a Tuesday.

Tonight, we have two teams that were mere heartbeats away from the 2007 NCAA Tournament. OVC regular season champs Peay lost a heartbreaker to Eastern Kentucky 63-62, and promptly collectively crumpled to the floor in pain. Utah State's two-point loss to New Mexico State in the WAC title game wasn't a complete shock, since they expended a lot of energy coming up from a low seed to upset NCAA-bound Nevada 79-77 in the semis. Both schools were given nice parting gifts: first-round NIT losses on the road.

Now it's 2007-08, and the Govs have opened up with a respectable loss at Vandy and a convincing home win over upset kings Belmont. They have the same potent 6-5 one-two punch as last season, with junior Drake Reed and senior Fernandez Lockett, both averaging 15 a game so far. Utah State? Now that's a different story. Despite retaining the services of senior sharpshooter and presumptive league POY Jaycee Carroll, the Aggies have stumbled badly out of the gate and are coming off a 0-3 road trip at Weber State, Cal Poly and old Big West pals UC-Irvine. A normally surehanded and disciplined team has averaged turnovers on 28.5 percent of its possessions, one of the 30 worst figures in all of Division I. USU's back home now, and they had a sterling 5-1 record in G!O!T!N! action two years ago. Let's see if we can give them back some of their lost mojo.

USU 71, APSU 68