Sac's new HC is pulling in FBS transfers fast:

Rodney Hammond Jr. spent his first collegiate season with former Pitt wide receivers coach Brennan Marion, and now he’ll spend his last with Marion.

Hammond — a 5-foot-9, 200-pound running back from Booker T. Washington in Norfolk, Va. — committed to Sacramento State on Sunday night, Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports reported. He entered the transfer portal earlier this month, which wasn’t an unexpected outcome to his career in Pittsburgh.

Sacramento State hired Marion, who served as the Pitt wide receivers coach in 2021, Texas wide receivers coach in 2022 and UNLV offensive coordinator in 2023-24, as its next head coach earlier this week.

It’s a nice landing spot for Hammond, who will join an offensive scheme that takes advantage of his skillset on the ground and through the air.

Hammond initially committed to Pitt as a three-star recruit in the class of 2021, earning playing time immediately as a true freshman. He showed flashes during his tenure in Pittsburgh, but for whatever reason (coaching decisions or a team-imposed suspension), he wasn’t able to put it all together.

He was suspended at the start of this season, missing the first four games of the season, but he was reinstated before the North Carolina game. He played in just four games — deciding to sit out and preserve his eligibility after playing four games.

https://pittsburghsportsnow.com/2024/12/22/former-pitt-rb-rodney-hammond-jr-reuniting-with-brennan-marion/#google_vignette

Pretty good job of seeding the by the Selection Committee!

The stats are pretty alarming, Mike. We shot 28% (14-50) overall and 6.7%
(1-15) from 3 to go along with 18 TO's and getting out rebounded 44-30. That's a sad stat sheet especially when you consider that Pepperdine has been struggling and had already lost to 4 BW teams. Irvine and San Diego both beat them by 18 and we lost by 39...yikes!

Les did show up for the post game and he was just pretty matter of fact in his comments. First he said, "Well, that was a lump of coal in our Christmas stocking" and then essentially went on to say that he was disappointed in the leadership of the team and that we didn't come out and play with energy and focus. He said if the players don't come back after the Christmas break with focus and effort, then the game will continue to humble them with more outcomes like this.

Ags fall by 39 points 85-46. I can't remember when we lost a game this bad to team that isn't all that good and was 0-4 against Big West teams before this rout. I don't think this is the kind of game where you just shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, there's gonna be games like this." We've had two ugly games like this already this year. It doesn't get much uglier than this...

when we do force a missed shit — DrMike

Now that's some seriously tough defense! :lol:

Brutal half for the Aggies. We shot 27% and had 9 TO's compared to the Waves 50% and 3 TO's. Our defense has to be locked in a disruptive in order for us to compete because we are not a gifted offensive team. So when teams can create size mismatches and exploit our defense, we're in trouble because our offense is generally very inconsistent

From The Big West Banter by Gauchodan:

Pepperdine picked a bad year to load up on Big West schools. The Aggies (7-4) are the fifth Big West squad to meet the Waves (5-7), who are 0-4 vs. the conference this season. Stefan Todorovic had 32 points in a losing cause to Long Beach State the other night, raising his season scoring average to 20.0. Todorovic shoots .403 from the 3-point line and has 65 free throw attempts, making 87.7% of them. This is the last D1 non-conference game for Davis, which has won 4 straight contests.

https://bigwestbanter.substack.com/p/seven-for-saturday?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3137908&post_id=153423864&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=31ratq&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I wouldn't have thought that our opponents were shooting 45% against us since the Aggies are such a defensive minded team.

Thanks for your informative post, PhantomHornet. I think you're spot on about your take on what's happening with Sac football. It sounds like the Hornets have found themselves a dynamic, young, up and coming head coach and I don't expect that it will take him very long to bring the program back up to speed. Keep us posted on how you see things evolving.

Yes, it sure is messy and certainly isn't very professional with all the leaks and hyperbole. They're doing their best not to be a class act. Whoever they hire is going to have a big rebuilding job. A whole bunch of their players fled to the portal after Thompson resigned.

I watched a good portion of the Irvine win over Belmont on the road. The Eaters are a really good basketball team. They play disciplined and smart and, from what I've seen, they're solid on both sides of the ball. Their big man, Bent Leuchten, is as good as any big man I've seen in the BW in a long time.

I've only seen UCSD play for a few minutes this year but they too are very impressive. The Tritons and the Eaters are definitely the frontrunners in the Big West by a good margin at this point.

Sac's talented RB, Elijah Tau-Toliver, has transferred to Michigan State.

https://x.com/elijahtau25/status/1869112450274234795

Games of December 15:

Riverside 78 St Francis 55
Fullerton 74 Denver 59
UCSD 80 Idaho 56
Bakersfield 96 La Sierra 46

Games of December 17:

Cal Poly 95 Denver 94
UCSD 75 Utah State 73

The following is from Gauchodan's column that writes about Big West Basketball:

Logan, Utah, is one of the toughest places to play in the nation. Utah State is 35-3 at home in the last 3 seasons and came into last night as one of just 5 undefeated teams in the nation. The elevation of 4,700+ feet can stymie all but the most well-conditioned teams. The crowd, 7,354 last night, is knowledgeable and vocal.

Utah State came into the game with a NET of 20 and a projected 9 seeding for the NCAA Tournament by ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi. For what it’s worth, Lunardi was projecting UCSD as the Big West auto bid and a 12 seed with UC Irvine one of his first four teams out.

The Tritons overcame all of the challenges to bolster the Big West Conference’s two-bid scenario. If UCSD and UCI can hold serve, finish 1-2 in the conference standings and face each other in the conference championship game, I think they’re both in.

Dan has been covering Big West Basketball for many years and he writes about every BW game in his Substack column. It's free and you can sign up for it here:

https://bigwesthoops.substack.com/cp/153313953

Les joked about how good the Idaho FT defense was in the post-game, radio interview. He also said that, when team starts missing a bunch of FT's, the players "start seeing the misses instead of the makes" when they get to the line so mentally there's just more pressure and the misses keep coming.

Thanks. I corrected my post. Glad we’ll have both the Conners brothers back.