Utah State basketball: USU a popular upset pick

BOISE — Everyone loves an underdog and Utah State, as usual, is an underdog in every sense of the word as the Aggies prepare to take on Marquette.

The Golden Eagles, the fifth-place team from the powerful Big East Conference, are a team loaded with fast, sharp-shooting athletes and carry what many "experts" consider to be a snub of a seed at No. 6 in the West Regional.

The Aggies, ranked No. 25 in the latest USA Today/ESPN poll, enter tomorrow's game with a No. 11 seed. USU is, however, getting a fair amount of love and respect in bracket projections on various media outlets.

Foxsports.com, for example, calls Utah State one of its most-likely upset teams according to a computer program that analyzes statistics, trends and the like.

"Utah State is actually the likely team from its part of the bracket to make the Sweet 16, propelling it from a popular first-round upset pick to a very possible Final Four participant," Foxsports.com. "The competition may be better in the tournament, but this is still a team that knows how to win. 56.6% and 35.0% likely to win their first and second round games respectively, the Aggies are a 6.6% favorite to advance to the Final Four."

While a Final Four prediction might be — OK, it definitely is — a bit of a stretch, an upset in the first round is something lots of people like to see and when filling out brackets, the Aggies and their 30 wins are popular picks.

The folks at ESPN.com had this to say when running a computer simulation of the tournament: "The Golden Eagles are winning 55 percent of simulations over Utah State, but that percentage is significantly lower than the other 6 seeds, all of which are winning at least 70 percent of their first-round simulations," the site said.

"In simulations against Marquette, Utah State is shooting 43.1 percent from the field," the article said. "However, if Utah State shoots 40 percent or better from 3-point range and 48 percent or better from the field overall while matching Marquette on the boards, they can pull off the big upset."

ATOMIC MASS: Another ESPN.com study had a computer program assigning values to various statistics and scheduling trends. When putting them all together, the program assigned the various tournament teams an "atomic mass" according to the findings. Among the findings, Utah State should have received a seeding of No. 5.