...and Louisville lost to Georgetown in the next round, 5-1.

League teams still get a trip to Florida every other year to play the Stetson Hatters. I imagine folks at Butler, Drake, Dayton, and Marist appreciate the trips to the Sunbelt states.

A couple of articles about his decision:

He’s not “wired” like other coaches:
https://sports.yahoo.com/inside-chris-petersens-stunning-decision-to-step-down-at-washington-232925310.html

Coaching burnout:
https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/the-grind-of-college-football-coaching-has-claimed-chris-petersen-and-its-only-getting-worse/

College of Idaho lost to Grand View, 14-6, in an NAIA quarter final game.

I grew up, or at least grew older, in a Big 10 town, back when there were actually ten teams in the conference. College sports on the West Coast are NOTHING like they are in the Midwest and in the South. A Big Ten school could play East Northern Southwest Dakota College of Education and Agriculture at Sturgis and there would be more spirit in town than you will experience at Big Game.

Worked with a woman who was raised and schooled in the Bay Area and whose husband had received both undergrad and medical degrees from a Big Ten school. (Not from An Ohio State University.) They moved to Columbus for a job change and went looking at pre-schools. Someone at one of the pre-schools they visited told them that on Fridays before games all of the kids wore scarlet and grey. Co-worker's husband turned around and walked out. NOT going to raise his kid to be a Buckeye.

Women's basketball: UCD 77, CSUS 75 (2OT)
Overall Causeway score: UCD 30, CSUS 10
End the year and the fall quarter on a better note. Next up....??? Gymnastic teams meet several times, or are in tournaments together, but unclear which if any will count towards Causeway Cup points.

Just guessing, but relatively minor sport, limited geographical participation, historically the sport has been dominated by the four major California universities. For a long time the entire tournament was just four teams; the winner of the MPSF (think Pac-12 and at one time Big West), the winner of the WWPA, a team from the east coast, and an at-large which was typically the runner up in the MPSF. Several teams (mostly Big West and West Coast Conference schools) broke away from the MPSF, I can only assume because of the domination by the big four Pac-12 schools, and created the Golden Coast Conference. They now get an auto-bid. The very first "Opening Round" or "Play-in" game is now on the Saturday following Thanksgiving and features two east coast teams.

Several small schools left the WWPA a few years ago and play in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Those are the same small schools, mostly the Clarement, Whittier, Mudd, Pomona-Pitzer schools that play in that conference for other sports. As of 2019 they no longer participate in the NCAA tournament. Men's water polo, like men's volleyball, only has the one tournament, theoretically open to all divisions. There is no seperate NCAA sanctioned tournament for what are otherwise D-II and D-III schools. A seperate organization, US Water Polo, is sanctioning a tournament for NCAA Div. III level schools for the first time this year. There are only a handful of D-II schools that play water polo.

But then, this is all a guess on my part.

UCD will play Pepperdine in an "Opening Round" game on December 5th at UOP. Winner will play host Pacific in a semi-final on the 7th. Pepperdine is 24-7 on the year and won the Golden Coast conference tournament. Ags and Waves have not played each other this year.

USC and UOP received at-large bids even though they each did not do well in their respective conference tournaments. Stanford, Harvard and Bucknell are also in the tournament.

https://www.ncaa.com/brackets/print/waterpolo-men/nc/2019

Go Ags!

"Really tough being an Aggie sports fan right about now"
Another silver lining behind the dark cloud:
Men's water polo is the conference regular season AND tournament champ. Going back to the NCAA tournament for the third time in four seasons.

Louisville will play Georgetown.

Santa Barbara easily defeated St. Mary's in Moraga, 4-0. The Gauchos will play Indiana.

Ags beat the Tritons rather convincingly, 14-5. This will mean an NCAA bid, though like basketball, water polo has a few "play-in" games before they get to the final four in a couple of weeks.

WWPA regular season AND tournament champions!

Go Ags!

College of Idaho 70, Ottawa (AZ) 23

Coyotes on the road next weekend against Grand View (IA.)

For what seems like the hundredth year in a row, Ags will play UCSD in the WWPA final. UCSD narrowly defeated Santa Clara 7-6 in their semi-final match. Santa Clara has been the surprise team of the tourney. They entered as the sixth seed, upset LMU in OT in a first round match and lost to UCSD by only one goal.

Go Ags!

Football: CSUS 27, UCD 17
Overall score: UCD 25, CSUS 10
Next event (and last event of the calendar year and fall quarter: Women's Basketball, Nov. 26.

Age advance to tomorrow’s WWPA Men’s Final with a 14-9 victory over Cal Baptist. They will play the winner of the other semi-final (Duh!!) which features Santa Clara against UCSD.

Monterey Trail upset Folsom High (in Folsom) in CIF Section playoffs last night. I'm calling that a good omen. Beat Sac!

Top seeded UCD (10th nationally) easily defeated 8th seed Fresno Pacific in the first round of the WWPA Men's Water Polo championship. Ags will play 4th seed California Baptist (17th nationally) , a 12-6 winner over host and 5th seed Concordia, in a semi-final game tomorrow.

In an all UC first round game UCSB defeated Cal, 3-1. Gauchos advance to play St. Mary’s.

College of Idaho will host Ottawa (Arizona) in an NAIA first round game this Saturday.

Men's basketball: CSUS 61, UCD 51
Overall score: UCD 25, CSUS 5
Next event: Football Nov. 23.

The less said, the better.