Here are some excerpts from a Sacramento Bee opinion piece about the proposed new Sac State football stadium written by Tom Philp yesterday. The article is too long for me to copy and paste in its entirety. The author is of the opinion that Dr. Wood has made a lot of public comments about how fast things are happening in regards to the new stadium and Sac's move up to FBS with little to show for it so far. The author also is critical about how difficult it has been for the Bee to obtain factual information from the university concerning the actual plans, projected costs and funding for all the changes that Dr. Wood has said are currently underway in Sac State Athletics.

It is going to take about twice as long as planned for Sacramento State to get its first glimpse of what it may cost to build a gleaming new football stadium. The project’s first cost estimate, initially scheduled for completion in February, now won’t be done until this summer at the earliest.

Frankly, the university could use the time. It has been struggling ever since that initial September announcement to promptly provide some basic public information about where things stand with this ambitious project. The best chance for success is for Sac State to be an open book, particularly with the students who are paying a disproportionate share of the cost of university athletics.

University President Luke Wood had no cost estimate in hand when he confidently unveiled his plan to build a 25,000-seat stadium on the same site as the temporary facility that has been the football team’s home for decades. But he did set in motion a crucial analysis to get a better idea of what a stadium might cost and to assess local residents’ interest in watching Sacramento State football play some tougher competition in a truly modern facility.

That September announcement included plans to contract with a San Francisco-based architectural firm, Populous, “to create the conceptual design for the stadium.” To its credit, the university has provided The Bee with its $318,000 contract with Populous.

Other than releasing the Populous contract, every other attempt by The Bee for information about university athletics has been slow-walked by the university. Sacramento State has been committing its own version of “delay of game,” a football penalty when the offense doesn’t get the play off in time.

Wood is attempting to achieve something that has eluded all his predecessors: pooling public and private funds into the nine-figure sum needed to build a stadium suitable for the Sacramento State and for top-division football. This feat will not be easy. Yet belief in its prospects is diminished by Wood’s administration slow-walking any request for basic information about this project.

In hindsight, it’s now pretty clear that Wood did not have much research about costs and revenues when he confidently announced his plans to build this state-of-the-art football stadium last September. He’s now learning on the fly. It would be a coup for the region to climb into the higher echelons of this treasured college sport. But given how little we currently know, it’s simply too soon to tell.

Whole article here: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article297901063.html

Sacramento State President Luke Wood revealed to The State Hornet that the school’s new multi-use stadium will be built in three phases and shared new information about Sac State’s potential move to the FBS

Wood said the first phase of construction on the stadium will begin this year, adding around $2.5 million in new amenities, but did not share what the estimated final cost of the stadium would be.

This information comes off the heels of Wood making several public statements about Sac State making the jump to the FBS, the highest subdivision in college football. Wood said that Sac State has spoken with three FBS conferences in the region and that a move will not happen in 2025.

Whole article here: https://statehornet.com/2025/01/sac-state-stadium-construction-plans-fbs-luke-wood/

From Bob Dunning's Substack column:

"I can't fault our energy and our desire, but they just made one more play than we did," said Aggie head coach Jim Les afterward.

"It's hard to get a win on the road, but we battled the whole way and gave ourselves a chance to win. We had a little bit of a breakdown on their three-pointer at the end. That's not the look we wanted to give them."

As it turns out, that was the only score that Pickens had in 26 minutes of action.

https://www.thewaryone.com/p/late-3-point-dagger-stops-aggies?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2582284&post_id=156152601&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=31ratq&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Tough loss for the Ags. Both teams kept battling back and forth for the whole game and the Ags just came up 2 points short. We need to put this one behind us and focus on getting an upset at Irvine on Saturday.

Vegas has us as 6 point underdogs currently.

I'm glad to see that Poly got that monkey of their backs!

Yes, it was the 5th straight win at Davis. I edited my post. Thanks.

I love watching the Aggie defense and the 1-2-2 zone defense that they use a lot just make the opponent use some clock getting the ball across half court is really effective. I think we forced two 10 second violations and we double teamed the ball a couple of times which forced TO's by the Bows.

When the Aggie defense is locked in it's fun to watch. Les and his assistants do such a great job of scouting our opponents and they come up with a solid defensive plan that focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of each individual player of our opponents. Our players know the tendencies of our opponents and often force them away from their strengths. That's great defense and, along with our press, it takes a lot of energy and stamina to keep up that level defensive pressure. Les does a good job of rotating players in and out so that they can get a much needed blow.

Terrific defense by the Aggies who held Hawaii to 35.8% FG shooting for the game. Hawaii came into the game shooting 48.7% which is the best in the conference. The Ags held the Bows to 23 points in the first half which was a season low for them.

I can understand Rocak's frustration when he got T'ed up for slamming the basketball to the floor after getting whistled for his 4th foul. The officiating was very uneven. They were calling a whole lot of fouls in the second half around the perimeter while allowing extremely physical contact and wrestling for position between Niko and Hawaii's bigs in the paint.

I hate it when they allow that much contact in the paint prior to a shot and then call Rocak for a foul if there was any contact at all even when he had his arms straight up. How the heck is Niko supposed to be able to defend big players without getting called for a foul when they are allowed to slam into him repeatedly and then lean in initiating the contact while shooting?

This was the Ags 5th straight win in a row over Hawaii.

UCSD really has it going. They had 3442 fans at the Lion Tree Arena for their win over UCSB which is the 4th largest crowd they have ever had since moving to D1.

Ags lose 56-46. Dreadful 3 point shooting by the Aggies. They were 1-21 for 4.7%.

I watched a good portion of the first half but both teams were playing so poorly that I turned it off. It was just not good basketball by either team. At one point, the two teams had a combined 17 TO's which was more than the total points they had scored up to that point in the game.

Ags by a bucket at the half 25-23.

Tough defensive battle so far with very few fouls. The Bows average 50% shooting and they’re at 29% so far.

First time we’ve seen Marsalis Roberson play. Looks like he’s finally been medically cleared to play after he tore his ACL.

Very small crowd tonight.

I think we already have a pretty nice rivalry with Hawaii. It seems like both teams play very hard against each other and we've had some games that have had their "testy" moments in the past especially on the island. The Bows have a good following of loyal, rowdy fans and I remember one game where the game had to be stopped in the final couple of minutes when the fans started throwing stuff onto the court. After the game ended, Les just waved to the Hawaii coach and quickly herded his team into the locker room. I can't remember who won that one though...

From The Big West Banter by Gauchodan:

The Rainbow Warriors (12-6, 4-3) went 2-0 on their last trip to the mainland, defeating UC Riverside and Cal State Fullerton. This trip looks a little tougher, with a game with UC Davis up near Sacramento followed by a Saturday night clash at UC Irvine in Orange County. Hawai’i went 1-1 at home last week, getting routed by CSUN but turning things around with a win over CSU Bakersfield. The ‘Bows are shooting 47.6% on the season, tops in the Big West. That includes a league-best 49.7% in Big West games.

The Aggies (11-8, 5-3) had a successful trip to the Central Coast last week, winning at both Cal Poly and UC Santa Barbara. TY Johnson has averaged 29.0 points over the last three games to raise his conference-leading scoring average to 21.2 points. Johnson is 3rd in the country in free throws and free throw attempts (8.5 per game). UC Davis is 12th in the nation in forcing turnovers at 16.1 per game.

We'll need to really bring the defensive intensity to the game tonight and make it very tough for Hawaii to shoot 50%.