Behold the invisible man: Patrick Nyeko.
The backup guard for Nevada played 10 minutes for the Western Athletic Conference-leading Wolf Pack on Saturday in a victory over Fresno State. But even if watching the game one might never know it because Nyeko did nothing that could be recorded when he was on the court.
In 10 minutes -- a half of a half or a quarter of a whole game. Nada. Zilch. Zero.
Nyeko did not attempt a shot or a free throw, did not grab a rebound and did not have an assist, a steal or a blocked shot. He did not commit a turnover, did not record a steal and obviously did not score.
His line in the box score started with a 10 and was followed by 14 zeros.
Nyeko obviously impacted the game in some way -- he presumably defended someone at some point, be it Kevin Olekaibe, Tyler Johnson, Steven Shepp or Jonathan Wills; someone in the Bulldogs' back court.
But, we're figuring that is pretty hard to do.
There were 28 fouls called in the game, but Nyeko didn't accidentally run into anyone.
There were 70 rebounds and he didn't get one of them.
There were 106 shots attempted, and he didn't have any of them.
Turns out it is hard to do. But, incredibly, that is not the longest a player in the WAC has gone this season without putting a mark in the boxscore to the right of minutes played.
San Jose State forward Matt Ballard went one minute better -- or worse -- than Nyeko in a loss to Montana State in November. Ballard played 11 minutes, with no shots, no free throws, no anything.
The Fresno State player who has come closest to making that list is Grant Hefeng. The freshman forward played eight minutes at North Dakota State, just long enough to commit two fouls; and five minutes against Texas-San Antonio, grabbing one rebound.
How did this happen?
Utah State lost to Seattle on Thursday, which is ... yeah, that's just not good.
The Redhawks are reclassifying this season into Division I basketball and went into that game 4-12, albeit against a decent schedule. But what makes it worse for the Aggies is that the game was played in Seattle, which makes very little sense coming as it did in the midst of the conference season.
Every team plays those games against lower-division programs to fill gaps in the schedule -- Fresno State played Cal State San Marcos last week and Nevada played Nebraska-Omaha.
But the Bulldogs and Wolf Pack played those games on their home floors.
Utah State was going to be on the road on Friday anyway, traveling to its game at Idaho. But coming off tough games and the tough trek to Ruston, La., and Las Cruces, N.M., the previous week, playing at Seattle is not something the Aggies needed to do.
"This is not an ideal scheduling situation going back-to-back weeks on the road and a nonconference game stuck right where you don't want it," Utah State coach Stew Morrill said. "I've never really liked playing nonconference games in the middle of conference, but Seattle is joining our league and we agreed to play them home-and-home, and, of course, they are trying to get some games in January and February and this is how it worked out."
Utah State, playing its fourth road game in 10 days, blew a late lead and lost 57-54 at Idaho to fall to 10-10 and 2-3 in WAC play.
Once kingpins of the conference, the Aggies already have lost as many league games than they did the past two seasons combined when they went 15-1 and 14-2.
The streak is over
Louisiana Tech made the longest trip in the WAC a winning one, going to Hawaii and beating the Warriors 74-70 on Thursday to snap a 10-game conference losing streak.
The Bulldogs lost their last seven WAC games last season and their first three this season, that previous victory coming on Jan. 29 against Boise State. They still were a long way from the conference record for consecutive losses. That is 24 games, set by San Diego State in the 1991 and '92 seasons.
Now that the Bulldogs are in the win column, the longest active conference losing streak belongs to San Jose State, which has dropped seven regular-season games in a row dating to last season.
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