A Member of the Spartan Nation from Utah, Jeff Studenka gives us his take from the MSU game in Utah last Saturday!

It was a great game indeed for us Spartans out west!  Fans from all over the western states came to cheer on the Green & White! Many drove for hours while others flew in from other states and some of us only had to drive 30 minutes to attend the MSU basketball game in Salt Lake City. I believe this was the first time the team has been back to Utah since the 1979 Final Four. We enjoyed every minute of it and being in the front row of the upper deck of Energy Solutions Arena allowed us to have an incredible view of the whole game and to be one of the first of the couple hundred Spartan fans to jump up and cheer at each opportunity. We sat by Spartan fans from Colorado, Logan-Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and SLC. Very cool statement for our program and on top of bad weather to boot! I saw were Jacob Hannon drove 14 hours from Montana to be there as well. That says it all about the Spartan family and The Spartan Nation! 

    

The BYU fans were great and really made it a tough atmosphere to play in. They had more students in attendance than would be in Provo (BYU campus) due to the bigger arena and it not selling out, so literally half of the huge lower bowl was all students and they were deafening at times, but we were quick to quiet them in the second half as I predicted to all those around us at halftime.  It was a good time and great comeback win for us and on the road against a legitimately ranked team as well.

    

Luckily the first couple rows of the upper deck were mostly Green and White and that made a difference when the BYU fans were quieted. We actually had a good “Go Green! Go White!” chant going a couple times and after the game, Izzo commented how awesome it was to hear and an unexpected surprise for this game. Unfortunately I missed out on the pregame speech Izzo gave to Alumni at the arena. I didn’t hear about it until afterwards, but I heard it was nice and Coach was pleased with the turn out.  It was great to see Jud in attendance as well!   

    

After the game, we got countless congratulations from BYU fans saying, “Good game”, “You guys have a great team”, “You should win the Big Ten”, and my favorite, “Who else is in the Big Ten?” They are the nicest losers I ever encountered. We commented to each other that no way would this happen in the Midwest. You gotta love the cultural differences!

    

BYU wants to have a four team event with Utah and two other quality schools, like MSU, each year.  A show case event at the Arena with two games for each where Utah and BYU don’t play each other. They mentioned that MSU would be a great team to include. Who knows, with Boylen at Utah it could just very well happen.  

Great time to be part of The Spartan Nation! Go State!

    

Jeff Studenka West Jordan, Utah 

MSU Class of 1992