He’s chiseling away at preeminence. The dominance on offense when scoring in the paint; or, on defense when rejecting the opponent’s advances, Billy White is shaping up to be someone special. As we all have seen over the past few years, the talent bar at SDSU continues to rise. In Fisher’s montage of talent, sits Billy White a highly recruited prospect out of Las Vegas. He had many opportunities and plenty of BCS schools that desperately needed his services, but in the end, he selected SDSU. Now, SDSU is beginning to see the genius of Fishers recruiting and the potential of Billy White. A prototypical forward, Billy White has unusual length and quickness when defending or attacking the board. The Wyoming game showed his dominance when given the opportunity to attack the boards and drive the lanes. His 24 points (a career high) and relentless defense kept Wyoming’s transition offense at bay while SDSU methodically surmounted a firm lead and subsequent victory. Look for Billy White to continue to excel his game to the next level. Clearly, this year has cultivated the confidence necessary to carry him to the next level. Now, as a sophomore, he must work on the discipline-side of the game, as well as, stepping up and taking the reins as the next leader of the team and inevitable ascension into the top 25.

Ostensibly, one can categorize this performance as something less than desirable. You could surmise that SDSU had the proverbial “day off”. After all, Lo-Wade was sick an Amoroso clearly was not himself while continuing to nurse the back injury. This explains the poor play-individually that is; however, as a team it doesn’t explain why they self-destructed when confronted with a must win. Now is this self destruction any different than most of the other “top” teams in the MWC? No! They too have imploded, and in some cases against softer competition under less than critical circumstances. But, when your fighting for first place outright, against a team that falls short of your talent level, SDSU should win-yes, it ‘s that simple. SDSU should rise to the occasion and play with the necessary urgency needed to win and win big. It’s simply too late in the season to be crumbling when the game amounts to arguably the biggest of the season. The talent is there; the ability and athleticism is there; so, where’s the desire? Watching the game last night, I was once again reminded of the the OLD SDSU style of play-meaning, they find ways to lose. It seems as if it is still omnipresent in todays team. It occasionally re-surfaces every now-and-then; but often when it matters the most.

On another note, I would be remiss if I did not go back to a comment I made about the Wyoming game in a previous thread. I attempted to explain why that game was important and that losing it could come back to haunt SDSU. Well, interestingly enough, Lo-Wade had a similar concern during his post-game interview after the UTAH game: “We’re going to have to dig deep,” said Wade, who received intravenous fluids before the game. “If we had won at Wyoming (on Jan. 14, a game Wade missed because of a sprained shoulder), that lessens the blow of a loss like this”. I appreciate Lo-wade’s insight and he is right. The UTAH game invariably became that must win-but they lost.

So, now the remaining games become MUST WINS. No more days off; no more bad games; no more unforced errors; no more poor shooting; no more lackadaisical play and no more shoulda-coulda-woulda’s. SDSU has 4 more games at home, effectively giving them the home court advantage for the remainder of the season. These remaining games will examine and extensively test their desire. The NCAA tournament is an unforgiving enviornment and SDSU doesn’t have the luxury of performing as poorly as they did against UTAH when playing against even better talent in the Tourny. The talent, depth and atheletism will get them 95% of the way, but as they painfully learned (ONCE AGAIN), it’s the desire that gets you the victory.