The game should be starting, but my BigWestTV stream is blank. Any advice?

Stephen Tsai, the Honolulu paper's chief sportswriter covering the Big West had a nice sketch of the upcoming conference play. His predictions are much more realistic than pre-season polls since it is based on the teams' records so far. He picks the Aggies to finish 5th and Hawaii 3rd. He does state, quite rightly I think, that there is a lot of parity in the conference this year, so... I wish I could post the article here, but I have to get past all the current obstacles they put on newspaper websites these days. Here is his overall ranking:

1. UCSB
2. UCR
3. Hawaii
4. UCI
5. UC Davis
6. CSU Fullerton
7. CSUN
8. Long Beach
9. Cal Poly

Raiders stat sheets shows Doss has ben targeted 5 times and has caught every one of them

Just looking a the box score and seeing how poorly the Aggies shot, it's amazing that the game was that close.

Are these games on streaming video anywhere?

Thanks, BlueGoldAg. I should have known that.

San Diego joins the Big West next year, right?

How was the crowd? Are more students showing up or are they studying for finals now?

Yeah, I was at that game. What a night. It was not just Corey Hawkins who lit it up. Ryan Sypkens and Josh Ritchart hit a combined 5 for 11 to supplement Corey's 8 for 9. (Not doing this from memory, I have the box score on ESPN, but I vividly recall how it felt.)) As I recall, the Ags came out early and buried a bunch of treys quieting the usually loud Hawaii fans and earning me some glares as I was not only cheering but wearing my UCD shirt. At what point some fans behind me said "What's an Aggie anyway?" I could not resist turning around and answering him: "It's short for Agricultural." Sadly, I've only seen the Aggies win once here since then.

Bob Hamilton used to schedule a lot of preseason games against teams from major conferences. I faintly recall one year when he took them on a road trip to play Michigan and Minnesota (two Big-10 teams at any rate). He always said it was to give them the experience of playing against top caliber opponents so they would learn how great teams work together. The counter argument was that it was bad for morale, but the two years I was there as an undergraduate, they won two Far Western Conference titles.

I really like this team. They were down by 18 and 15 to two PAC-12 teams in consecutive road games and came back strong to make it close. Manjon is a special player and I would bet he'll be the Big West newcomer of the year. I appreciate what DrMike said about Pepper and Koehler both having made big strides in their game. That's a sign of good coaching and I would say that both are pretty impressive for their smart play and hustle.

I had to record and watch the game today, but I was pretty impressed by what the Aggies were doing against Cal. Cal is no Utah, but they are not likely to finish 12th in the Pac-12 as everyone in the national media thinks. Neither will UC Davis finish 8th in the Big West. Ezra Manjon reminds me of T. J. Shorts in a lot of ways (pardon me if some of you have posted this observation before but this was the first time I've seen an Aggie game this season). He's very quick, very smart, has some great moves to the hoop and handles the ball as a point guard should. I was pretty excited when the Ags took a lead but did not expect them to win even then. Cal has too much size. Given that disadvantage, I was a bit surprised that Neufeld played so little and that Koehler played so much. I did notice that we took the lead while Koehler was in there so maybe Coach Les liked the chemistry of that five-some.

My first chance to see this year's Aggie Men's b-ball team. I'm not expecting the Ags to win, but I hope they are competitive. Last year, they could have beaten a Cal team that was not well disciplined. Their new coach has them playing a lot better and they have a lot more talent than UC Davis.

A disappointing end to a disappointing season.

I see that we're playing Sac State in the Causeway Classic too. That's quite a hornet double header. Go Ags!

It's kind of sad to see the lack of posts on this site as of late. I checked back to 3 years ago and saw 172 posts for a Big West tournament game against UC Irvine. Everybody likes a winner. There are 353 Division 1 teams and VMI is ranked by Jeff Sagarin at 339, so you know where that puts the Ags. Nobody likes a loser. Yeah we beat Idaho, which is ranked 335 and William Jessup, not ranked. But as I said in a previous post, it is easy to face a season with low expectations and as the Ags did when T J. Shorts first showed up, a young team can become a pleasant surprise. I've got a lot of faith in Jim Les to get this team to gel and I do not think they will place 8th in the Big West.

There's something to be said for low expectations. It is more likely that you will be happy with a few victories, especially upsets. Less likely to be terribly disappointed. I had high expectations for the football team, even though I've always been more of a basketball fan, and the Aggies have been a disappointment there. I don't think the basketball team will be disappointing and I'll be there when they come to Hawaii, rooting for an upset and getting pelted by pineapples.

I must be missing something. According to up to date Big Sky standings, UC Davis is 1-2, but they've only played two conference games: Montana and Cal Poly. Neither North Dakota nor North Dakota State are in the Big Sky. What other Big Sky team did they lose? Cal?

Street & Smith's has UC Davis as coming in 7th ahead of Cal Poly and the Titans. I don't expect many prognosticators to rate the Aggies very high, but nothing like low expectations to make things more exciting if an when those expectations are exceeded.

I thought that once a player cleared waivers and another team (Jacksonville) claimed him, his original team (Oakland) could not touch him unless the Jags released him. Not sure how this works. Did Jacksonville release him? In any case, glad to see him back to the Bay Area, at least for a year.