• 'Elite' UC Davis mascot ousted, replaced with cow
    It's more likely they just took a bunch of common mascot names and put it to a vote. I don't imagine there are too many mafia bosses or wealthy Spanish lords in San Francisco.
  • 'Elite' UC Davis mascot ousted, replaced with cow
    Does UCSF have a mascot ? Maybe the aspiring doctors could put together a softball team with a duck mascot. The UCSF Quacks.
  • 'Elite' UC Davis mascot ousted, replaced with cow
    Be careful. Heifers can be whatever gender they want or no gender at all. In fact Hugh could be a bull that identifies as a heifer. Seems like UCD missed the Banana Slug opportunity, which was way ahead of its time
  • 'Elite' UC Davis mascot ousted, replaced with cow
    I think this is all pretty stupid. That said I think the Gunrock mascot is pretty stupid-looking (although a horse mascot is always going to look stupid pretty much.

    If they wanted a truly inclusive mascot they should introduce a "Bill". Everyone has bills. Everyone can relate.

    As my old man would say if I brought up this topic while in school-"How are your grades ? Getting all A's I hope ?"
  • 2022 Baseball Commits
    Depending on how long he needs to complete his degree he could even be a student assistant. If an ex-major leaguer as a student assistant sounds far-fetched guess who is a student assistant for Oklahoma State ?

    Robin Ventura.

    How often do you see a former MLB All-Star and manager go back to college and join his old college team as a student assistant?
  • Baseball beats Pacific on the road
    This got me curious as to how the former Aggies who left amid the hazing business were doing.

    Michael Campagna has gone from a big fish in a small pond to a smaller fish with a much lower batting average in a not significantly bigger pond at USF. He went 0 for 2 against the Aggies today.. He also traded a team where the coach quit because of the players' mischief to one where coaches were fired for their own mischief.

    Jake Spillane has pitched a grand total of 5 2/3 innings for UC Irvine out of the bullpen.

    Jalen Smith has picked where he left off now at UC San Diego, hitting over .300 as a starter. He went 3 for 11 against the Aggies this year. Smith went from a ream that probably was not going to the playoffs to one that had absolutely no chance because it was in transition to Division I.

    The Carrell Brothers have 2/3 of an inning pitched between them at Oklahoma and Zach has yet to make an appearance as far as I can tell.

    They have some famous surnames on that Oklahoma roster including Mark McGwire's son and perhaps the grandson of Jack Nicklaus (haven't verified but his name is Jackson Nicklaus).
  • Baseball beats Pacific on the road
    I have only been to 3 games this year (all of them losses) but I've witnessed a good deal of progress-they are definitely in a much better place than they were at the beginning of the year.

    I think the coaching staff change has benefitted them a good deal. They are finding some previously unknown defensive versatility in players, like Nick Iverson in the outfield and Carson Seeman and Kyler Arenado pitching. Also, I thought I saw Omar Plascencia (a catcher) in a box score at shortstop ? I'm sure Arenado was only selected as a pitcher out of necessity, but he doesn't pitch like your typical position player doing mop-up work in a blow-out. He actually owns 1 of the six wins.

    I have also seen a big improvement on offense. When I saw them play Saint Mary's they depended on hit by pitch and fielding errors just to muster any offense. Now there's only a couple of players (reserves who don't play much) that look lost at the plate.
  • 2022 Baseball Commits
    Good catch-did you find these from separate internet articles, or was there a single article announcing them ?

    As far as I can tell Andrew Cisneros is from Moorpark, CA and attended Sierra Canyon HS.

    Usually UCD puts out a press release about new recruits prior to the season. Guess that was interrupted this year by the hazing investigation.
  • Causeway Cup, 2021-22
    Lol https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2022/5/6/athletics-uc-davis-wins-causeway-cup-for-eighth-straight-year.aspx

    NOW they say something. Does the UCD website get all its news from this website ?

    Test: someone post some fake news and see if they publish it.
  • Men's Basketball 2022-23 Schedule
    Pencil in Academy of Art and William Jessup for sometime lol
  • Bee article on 2022 baseball season
    They chose to highlight that the program only had 1 winning season in the last 14. Go back 1 more and you have 2 in 15. Who chooses 14 years as a frame of reference for a program around this long ? That's such an arbitrary choice. The team was 9-7 in 2020..that's a third winning season. It doesn't matter how many total games there were because every team had to stop playing at about the same time.

    I think the roster turnover will be greater than 15 players. We know that the seniors (Arenado, Lemos, Mico) would probably be done, but there's also a class of COVID-19 juniors too who might be done with their degrees too (players like Meredith and Peng) James Williams III and Raul Sandoval I think are also redshirt juniors but I've never heard of anyone transferring from a community college and completing their degree in one year. Then there are the freshmen. Hopefully none of them try to use this as a springboard to play somewhere else or just decide all this losing in the name of progress is more than they signed up for. Hopefully they're mature enough to respect the process but the hazing history shows us not all UCD players are necessarily mature. Inevitably some of the fringe players ( as specific as I want to be-to help avoid saying negative things about specific players) will be cut.

    But the pitching. Have you ever seen this many huge ERA's. Had no idea Dobbins Stadium was in Denver, CO !
  • NIL Is Nothing: California’s Next Big Anti-NCAA Bill Takes the Field
    I think football is the only UCD sport even remotely in danger of generating enough revenue to have to participate in this, and it's a long shot. Men's basketball couldn't even come close to a sellout when they hosted Stanford. Maybe they should should schedule Chico State. They've already demonstrated they're not afraid to schedule a D-II team.
  • NIL Is Nothing: California’s Next Big Anti-NCAA Bill Takes the Field
    I'm on board with paying students for NIL. If a school is using you for marketing you deserve to get paid.

    However this is such a stupid new bill. Do they honestly think all the universities are going to comply ? They will find ways to cheat or cut other sports to compensate.

    So many of our CA lawmakers are idiots. With everything going on right now. with everything that is wrong with the state they're spending all this energy working on getting college athletes paid more ?
  • Baseball beats Pacific on the road
    Well of course it all fell apart in the 6th inning today with-you guessed it-errors.

    I think they have better defense coaching, such that if they had marginally better fielders they'd really do a good job consistently getting to more ground balls. Nicholson and Ayers are both former college and pro infielders as well as infield coaches so this a facet of the game they would be able to better coach it than the previous regime.
  • Baseball beats Pacific on the road
    I would have to spend significant time researching this, but it seems like this year's team is more competitive in games they lose than last year's team. The higher team ERA tells a different story, but the closer losses seems to indicate that they're beating themselves less on defense, and the other team is legitimately beating them if a greater portion of the runs are earned. This would suggest improved defense, perhaps in a way that would be more difficult for an outsider to notice.

    If they could win 4 of their last 16 games that would not only double their season total but it would also mean they would finish having won 20% of their games. Last year's team barely won more than 20% with a full roster and significantly more depth.
  • 2022 Baseball Commits
    Good catch. Also a nice job by Coaches Ayers, Valenzuela, and Thornton.. I assume they do the majority of the recruiting.

    I think this re-build is going to take more than 2 years. They have some very good building blocks, like Nick Leehey, Mark Wolbert, Bryan Green, and James Williams III, but they need a lot more of them if they want to even just have a winning conference record., let alone go to the playoffs.

    Community college transfers like Gouveia are going to be especially important, as starters and leaders, moreso than they've ever been in the past. I think it will be tougher to recruit high school players at first who are ready to step right in and take over like Leehey and Wolbert, and they'll have more recruits who need a little more development time. So in other words JC players will be more likely to be starters than relievers and bench players.

    They might need to adjust their standards a bit when evaluating JC talent. The top pitchers will never get to Davis-UCD is too low in the college baseball pecking order to get them. Finding hidden underappreciated gems. Guys with underwhelming baseball stats but good tools and work ethic. Look at J.D. Mico-short, skinny infielder who wasn't even the full-time starter at Cosumnes River College, even though his dad is the coach ! You definitely can't accuse him of nepotism. But when several players fled the program and the guy who started the year at second wasn't hitting Mico stepped up and now he's the starter. They would do well to find a couple of J.D. Mico's.

    I've decided that all the players who left to play elsewhere (Except those who graduated of course) are whiny crybabies who abandoned their brothers-instead of sticking around and playing "Don't **** Your Brother". Hazing humor. Not to mention some of them may not have clean hands as to the hazing. Just my opinion, not going to discuss it. No one will change my mind, but I'm nobody so who cares what I think ?

    I also think there may be a lot of roster turnover before next season. Just a few seniors this year, but most of the position player reserves have played very little. In a season with this much losing there is plenty of opportunity to play the bench. That the bench hasn't played much says to me that there is a pretty significant difference in the current defensive + offensive capabilities between the starters and reserves, maybe moreso than in regular years. And they will definitely add pitching..
  • MBB Off-season 2022
    I wonder if, like the baseball team, there is a problem with the team culture. It can't all be over playing time. I think your average UC Davis recruit is smart enough to understand that they'll have to earn it, and that early on.there may not be much opportunity to earn.

AggieFinn2

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