EWU favored by only 2 points, but ESPN gives them a 70% chance of winning.

You're right agalum. You could see the team getting lazy with its passes and defense about midway through the first half. I'd bet that coach Les chewed the out the first chance he got. The Hawks did take some advantage of it, but they lacked the ability to do what Boston U. did back in Milwaukee.

Is Milling on the bench?

Ags don't look rusty or over-confident, but nice to see them hitting their free throws (81%), especially Anigwe who is 4/4. Note that Ags hold a 29-8 rebound edge and a 8-1 assist edge. Bob Williams, however, made a good point about the last game played by the Hawks, a tough 92-91 win over a league opponent, Chaminade College of Honolulu, only last night. They're not only over-matched, they're probably a bit tired.

19-2, Aggies in the first 4 and half minutes. Holy Names is no match in either size or speed with UCD. This reminds me of the days of the Far West Conference when we wold play Div. I teams and the game would effectively be over in the first 10 minutes.

I see that ESPN gives Sac State the highest odds of winning the title.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/insider/story/_/id/35211710/fcs-quarterfinals-top-games-key-player-updated-title-odds

In a similar comparison, it does not bode well that UCI beat Pacific yesterday.

The team is off for almost two weeks for finals. Maybe coach Les should give them final exams on "The Difficult Craft of Shooting Free Throws." Seriously and, not too much of the burden on the players, I wonder if there is a sports psychologist who works on the team. There are a variety of methods that can be used to help with the mental aspects of specific skills from relaxation to visualization. My former grad school adviser did some of that kind of work using video and other techniques to help the Hawaii baseball team.

I left with the Ags trailing by 4 and around 6 minutes to play. Sounds like it was an exciting ending when Pepper made that 3 to bring them within one, but too little, too late. Very frustrating that they lost this game while missing 14 free throws. Take away Pepper and they were 10 of 23. They need to figure this out before Big West play starts.

I really like Bob Williams' commentary. He knows the game like few people do. I always wondered why he didn't catch on with a major program. He pointed out that the foul (and it really is foul) shooting problems of all but Pepper are due to mental issues. Overthinking the shot or something.

Ags defense seems to have slipped a few notches. Looks like no blow-out tonight.

I hope it's a blow out (and not an almost blow out as against BU) because I won't be able to see the end tonight and would like to know the Ags will win. My wife and I have tickets to see Yo Yo Ma in Waikiki. Not your everyday concert. Go Ags!

We could just as easily have gone 0-3 in this tournament as 3-0. All of the games were very close, but that made for some very exciting basketball.

I was freaking out remembering the time I was in Seattle watching Cal play Washington. The Huskies were up by 19 at the half but the Bears came out hot in the second half and won the game, much to the chagrin of all my Husky friends and colleagues. Cal had some guy named Kevin Johnson at the time. They could sure use him now.

Having struggled with free throws myself and determining to get better, I can't understand how division I college athletes can be so poor. As a team the Aggies are shooting 61% over 7 games. I'm sure coach Les knows what it takes to get players to be able to shoot well: mostly good form (which is coachable) lots of practice and developing a set routine at the line. Once the game starts, it's mental. Johnson (42.1), Anigwe (45.5), Lose (16.7!) and Milling (50) are all shooting far under their ability IMHO. I hope Johnson's hitting 7/8 in OT today gets him, at least, on the right track.

I just watched the OT and hated it. Of the 19 points scored by both teams, only 4 were field goals, thus the refs made it a free throw shooting contest. For the whole game, there were 74 foul shots taken. It not only makes for dull basketball, but clearly gave the edge to us, because we got 51 of those free throws. Had it been even, BU would have won since they were much better (73.9%) than us. As it was, we had a 14 point edge from the stripe. Having said that, I was dismayed by how poorly we shot i the second half. I think Pepper even had an air ball. Hard to believe the offense could have collapsed like that. MVP goes to T Y Johnson, who had 11 of the Ags 15 points in OT.

I can't watch this anymore.

UCD has gone over 12 minutes without making a single shot, since 16:36 of second half.

Don't look now, but the Aggies might be letting this one get away despite a 21 point half time lead. The lead is now down to 8.

Ags still not doing very well with their free throws, but at least they've cut down on the sloppy passes. In fact, Beasely and Johnson both made some excellent passes to save balls going out of bounds.
All of these games have been over-officiated. Not only does it interrupt the game flow and throw the balance of scoring out of whack, but it slows the game a whole lot and it puts too many players at risk of disqualification. I wonder if refs in the midwest have to call it closer because they play a more physical brand of ball over there?