I was good friends with Mike Creed who was a great goalie for the Aggie water polo team. He was all west coast at least once and should be in the hall of fame. I lost track of Mike. Last time I saw him he was visiting Davis and he told me he had moved to Barstow. His good friend from Las Lomas High was Mark Olson who was a real character. I saw his first game when Bob Hamilton put him in as a freshman and he made three spectacular plays in a row. At the next time out, Ham hugged Mark and practically carried him off the court.

I got to play a lot of basketball against Mike Belotti, who was a very good athlete. We took the basketball class together. I had no idea he would become a great coach and when I was watching Oregon on a bowl game telecast I told my father that I once beat him in a 3-on-3 game. Dad didn't believe me.

I'm not sure of this, but I think Bill Barker, once a great first baseman, is in the UC Davis Hall of Fame. I can't find him there, but I'd heard he was. He was in my dorm. Funny fellow who is now, I think, a dentist, probably a retired dentist.

I knew a bunch of others who did not rise to any kind of local stardom, except for maybe Mike Murray who died of cancer after playing one year of varsity basketball. They used to have a charity game for him, but not sure if that's still going on.

One of the good things about being a student at UC Davis was that the athletes often lived in the dorms, so I got to know some of them across the whole spectrum. In some major sports programs the jocks live in a dorm only for them. It looks like name dropping is not allowed on this site, but I doubt most posters would go back so far as to recognize any names I could drop, but there were some very good athletes I got to know. Just regular guys for the most part.

Versus has moved the Ags all the way up to #11.

BlueGoldAg, I think this one is even less realistic. Would the committee put three Big Sky teams in the same bracket? If they were thinking about geographic proximity, I could see it, but they also have Villanova possibly coming all the way from Philly to play Sac State, et al.

The Big Sky seems to be pretty dominant with over half of the byes. I'm guessing that after the next two games, that will drop.

If Im seeing things clearly (and many of you know that's not always the case), four FCS teams media ranked ahead of UC Davis lost today: North Dakota State, Eastern Washington, Southern Illinois and Southeast Louisiana. I wonder if that will vault the Aggies into the #4 rank, not that any of this matters going into the game against the Eagles. EWU has lost two straight including to 4-4 Weber State, I wonder if they've run into injury problems or something?

Hastings has "rushed" 11 times this season for a -8 yards. A problem with college stats is that they count a sack as a rush attempt. I am not sure how they figure it, because he has been sacked 6 times. I wonder if any forward progress is considered a rush, even if it results in negative yards?

Two big ones coming up. Ags control their own destiny.

But they took 7 minutes to do it.

Through only 3 quarters, Aggies have out-gained NAU 484 yards to 220.

One TD run doubles the Ags rushing total for the game.

I think scoring plays are reviewed, but no score, no review. I agree that Hawkins should have challenged. It looked like Thorpe had possession when his knee touched the ground.

I missed a chunk of the game. What happened to Martinez?

Commentators said the extra point would have been the Ags first lead. What game are they watching?

My bad, I thought the play by play guy identified Larison, but Crawford threw the pass.

Larison threw the pass. Wobbly but it worked.

Don't think it was a DPI, but leading with the helmet, spearing: personal foul should have been called.

Not a good way to start a game

I watched the Big West Men's Basketball Preview on ESPN+. They did very brief thumbnails on each team from bottom to top of the coaches poll, plus UCSD. They focused on the battle at the top where the coaches separated UCI and UCSB by only one vote. Had an interview with Amadou Sow. Why does it seem like he's been around forever? I guess he puts getting his degree over a shot at the NBA.

I can't recall if anyone has brought up the Sagarin ratings (http://sagarin.com/sports/cfsend.htm), but counting only FCS schools, it rates UC Davis #18 (127 overall). To Riveraggie's point, Sac State is #16 (124 overall), just ahead of U. of Arizona. Sagarin uses strength of schedule, as well as points, but also how teams have done in more recent games.