Ags lose 83-77 in OT.

Valiant effort by the Aggies who had a 2 point lead with 3.6 seconds to go but fouled Houpt, the Aztecs best FT shooter, with 0.4 seconds to go in the game and she calmly sank both FT's to send the game into OT. Houpt is an amazing 142-152 from the line in her career which is a phenomenal 93.4% shooting.

56 fouls were called in this game and the biggest difference was the inability of the Aggies to hit their FT's. They were only 17-31 whereas the Aztecs were 28-35. The other big factor was the Norris got in early trouble and had only played 8 minutes going into the 4th quarter. She ended up with 13 points in only 19 minutes.

Nya Epps had her best game ever on both ends of the floor. She finished with 26 points on 11-14 shooting and had 5 steals. Tova Sabel had 26 points as well.

67-67 and going to OT after one of the craziest final 2 minutes I've ever seen.

50-43 Aztecs after the 3rd.

SDSU extends the lead to 10 as the Ags continue to turn the ball over and shoot poorly from the line.

33-28 SDSU at the half.

The Aztecs are much more aggressive than the Aggies and, although they are not that much bigger, they have dominated the paint. Too many Aggies standing around flat footed on the offensive boards and too many sloppy passes by the Ags also. They already have 13 TO's. They need to come out and play more physical in the second and take care of the ball.

16-14 Aztecs after the 1st quarter. Lots of fouls by the SDSU but the Aggies didn't take advantage of it and were only 5-10 from the line.

Yes, it seems most of the talk is about momentum and keeping the push alive.

Big Sky Schedule for Saturday 11/08:

EWU at Northern Colorado - 11 am
Sac State at Montana State - 12 noon
Idaho State at Weber State - 12 noon
Idaho at Portland State - 1 pm
Northern Arizona at Cal Poly - 5 pm
Aggies at Montana - 7:30 pm

Les brought in 4 transfers this year and he had high praise for all of them but only Daugherty has seen significant minutes. Generally, coaches often bring in transfers because they think they can contribute right away. I don't know if that's true for Les but I do find it curious that we have seen such a limited number of players actually getting playing time when, prior to the season, Les talked about the depth of this team and how he expected to play uptempo with a lot of players seeing action.

Scroll to the 3 minute mark to hear their opinion about the push for Sac to be in the PAC12:

Well, we came home from our 2 game road trip with a 1-1 record in which the team showed a lot of fight in both games. However, I actually thought our game our game against UW was the better outing of the two for us. Idaho led for nearly 90% of the game before the Aggies took advantage of Idaho's 2 big men fouling late in the game. The Ags finally took the lead for good with 3:27 to go in the game.

The Vandals couldn't miss from beyond the arc especially in the first half. Give them credit for draining those shots but we have to contest those 3's better. They simply got too many open looks from the perimeter.

Idaho returned 10 players from last year's team but they were only 11-21 last year overall and they were picked to finish 7th this year in the Big Sky by the Big Sky coaches and 9th by the media. So they aren't expected to be a contender in the Big Sky but you never know.

It's a good sign that the Ags played really hard in both games and never caved in when they got down by double digits but Jim Les teams always play very hard so that was to be expected. We also saw how much we are currently relying on TY to carry the majority of our offense which is both a great thing to see when he does it but it also is worrisome that he needed to carry a disproportionate bulk of the team's offense in both games. Our upcoming opponents will certainly take notice of how dependent we are on him and will do everything they can to slow him down including playing him very physical and throwing double teams at him. That should open things up a bit for some other players to score but, other than Tamba's best ever 17 points against the Vandals, we haven't seen where that offensive punch is going to come from.

I know it's extremely early in the season and we all know that Les is masterful at figuring out how to get the best from the talent that he has. It's also pretty common for us to have a rough time in the pre-conference schedule each year as Les likes to challenge his players against some tough teams early in order to get his them battle tested before conference play begins. It will be interesting to see how he puts the pieces of the puzzle together this year especially offensively and to see what he has in mind for a bunch of players who have yet to see any playing time at all.

FT's: Aggies 20-25 Vandals 15-25
Points off TO's: Aggies 25 Vandals 8

Our 3 point shooting so far this year is nothing to write home about. We were 6-27 at Washington and 7-27 tonight. So we are 13-54 after 2 games which is a paltry 24%.

Also, we've yet to see much playing time for the 4 transfers we brought in this year:
Carl Dougherty - 27 minutes total
Derek Sangster - 2 minutes total
Nils Cooper - 0
Jamaal Unuakhalu - 0

We also have not seen Jac Mani, Francesco Borra or Marsalis Roberson get any playing time.

I listened to the radio, post-game interview with Les and he said he was proud with how the team grinding it out even though it wasn't pretty. He said we made a lot of mistakes and we have of things to clean up. He wasn't happy with our 3 point defense. He felt we just didn't do a good job of contesting their 3's but gave the Vandals credit for hitting their 3's. It was also win #250 for Jim Les in his coaching career.

TY said he came back because "Coach Les is one of a kind...I'm also trying to pick his brain about basketball...he's like a father figure...not many coaches out there like that...he's the reason I decided to play here for my last year."

I think we got a big break when their two bigs fouled out. It wasn't a pretty win and we looked pretty ragged at times but we never quit and got the win.

Les preaches defense but it's nowhere to be found tonight...