In other BW action today:

Poly at Riverside at 5 pm
Santa Barbara at Irvine at 6 pm
Bakersfield at Fullerton at 7 pm
CSUN at Hawaii at 7 pm

Thanks for the head up, Mike.

The schedule for these last 3 games is unusual: CSUN las Thursday, then home Saturday against Fullerton and now down to San Diego. That's a lot of up and down the state and, like you said, an empty gym with and odd start time could be problematic. This team is coming along nicely right now so I'm hopeful for a 4th BW win in a row.

The following is part of a post by zer21 over on the Big West Boards Men's BB Forum and I think it's an accurate evaluation of the the Hawaii fans in general:

We might have the saltiest fan base in the Big West, theyre going to complain about every call cause thats what they do. I doubt it will ever change.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/bigwest/1-14-games-t26996-s20.html

Quotes from the Enterprise:

Aggie head coach Jim Les credited his team’s physical presence on offense down the stretch as the difference in the second half.

“I think we were aggressive on the offensive boards and getting second chances,” Les said.

“Getting those second possessions was critical. It was an exciting Big West game where we made a lot of winning plays, and those plays came from a lot of different places. I love the resolve of this team.”

Taylor, the Fullerton coach, played two seasons with the Aggies and was a teammate of current UCD assistant coach Kevin Nosek.

He was disappointed in the loss, but gracious in defeat.

“When you’re on the road, the margin for error is very small,” Taylor said.

“That was Big West basketball out there, with both teams fighting and scraping. We turned it over too many times and their offensive rebounds gave them too many second chances.”

https://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/basketball-pepper-sprinkles-free-throws-for-aggies-victory/

Hawaii 79 Long Beach State 70 - Final

Hawaii pulls it out in the last 2 minutes in a wild, physical game and, of course, with the typical rowdy Hawaii crowd making their feelings known very loudly.

LB is extremely long and athletic and they play fast and push the ball hard up the court on nearly every possession. The had 50 points in the paint but their defense was undisciplined. The next game between these two teams in LB is going to be a war. They don't seem to like each other very much.

Hawaii 30 LB 27 at the half.

LB had travel problems and didn't check into their hotel until 4 a.m, I would imagine they are a weary team.

Riverside just upset UCSB 65-64 for their first win in the last 25 games they've played at Santa Barbara.

It was a heck of a game with Riverside playing very deliberately while shooting over 70% for most of the second half and built an 11 point lead with 3 minutes to go before the Gauchos went on a 13-2 run in the last 3 minutes to take the game down to the wire.

Other scores:

Irvine 71 CSUN 57
Bakersfield 56 San Diego 52
Long Beach at Hawaii is just now getting underway.

My wife and I finally made it to our first game of the New Year after coming down with Covid over the holidays. Great win for the Aggies in really tough, evenly matched basketball game.

Fullerton and the Aggies are similar teams in many ways. Neither has great size, both get contributions from a lot of players and both teams play hard, physical defense so it was no surprise that this game went down to the wire. The Ags got nice contributions from everyone who took the floor. This was a solid, unselfish team win for the Aggies.

Anigwe and Rocak both had two fouls very early in the game and I thought that would be big trouble for us but Les really managed it masterfully by swapping those two in and out every 3 or 4 minutes and neither picked up their 3rd until the second half.

DeBruhul is really giving us some good minutes each game now. Pepper's 3's weren't dropping but then you look up and he's 29 points and his FT's iced the game. Johnson's 3 point play and Anigwe's put back were huge in the finally 2 minutes and Ade's boards were big as well.

This team thrives off their defense and it's really a fun to watch them communicating, switching, helping out on the weak side and just being so doggedly determined. You have to be in really good physical condition to play that hard on defense throughout the game and still have some legs left for offense at crunch time. We're going to be in a lot of games like this and it will be our defense that keeps us close.

The official attendance was 1247. Not great but certainly the biggest crowd of the season and there was good energy in the house too. That number should go up if we keep putting up some W's.

Poor shooting has hurt the Aggies in the games where they have been soundly defeated and, unfortunately, today's loss to the Titans, 67-51, was another cold shooting affair for the Ags. 32% shooting overall and a dismal 6-25 from 3 for 24% won't put you in a position to win very often. Fullerton shot 52% overall and 60% from 3 to win it easily.

The LB at Poly game scheduled for yesterday was canceled due to flooding in San Luis Obispo.

DeBruhl plays really hard and he did a good job on defense and handling the ball filling in for Johnson.

Pepper does so much even when he isn't scoring. He's really been driving the lane and distributing the ball to other players for open shots in recent games and I don't think we've ever had a player that plays any harder 100% of the time that he's on the floor. He's just a tremendous basketball player.

In other BW games tonight:

UCSB 60 Bakersfield 48
Riverside 74 San Diego 68
Irvine 70 Fullerton 65

It wasn't pretty but the Ags just kept grinding and pulled out the win. Great job on the boards by the Ags 42-24. I really like this win because of how hard we kept playing even though we really couldn't get the shots to drop until final few minutes. Our defense and rebounding kept us in the game until we starting hitting a few shots. Gritty win for the Ags!

This is an ugly basketball game...

Johnson must be injured. He only played 8 minutes and hasn't come back into the game.

I saw that. Their bio banners on the players was messed up last week too.

Man, our 3 point shooting leaves a lot to be desired this year. The Matadors zone has made every shot difficult for the Aggies and they'll stay in that zone as long as we can't knock down shots from the outside.

The Ags hang on for an 83-73 win.

63-46 Ags at the end of the 3rd quarter.

Aggies are playing well and lead 43-25 at the half.

17-13 Ags after the first quarter.