We just saw Wicked tonight and it's a great movie.

Georgia 44 Georgia Tech 42 in 8 OT's - Final

Irvine in ranked #3 in the mid-majors poll.

I think being able to play games that aren't scorching hot is a big deal for both baseball and soccer and their fans as well. Later games should bring better crowds. No one wants to sit on aluminum seats in 90-100+ temperatures. I've broiled in the full sun at a few Giants games in the past when the temperature was only in the low 80's!

I think the Sac12 folks are going "embellish" everything they can to try and keep the momentum going...

I think he's the same PA guy that does the women's game. I'm not a big fan of his style of announcing but I think he has been doing the women's games for a long time.

It was more of a typically, quiet, small Aggie crowd but, then again, there wasn't much to get excited about...

Excellent article illustrating why Lan Larison should be the Walter Peyton Award winner this year:

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2024/11/25/football-the-case-for-lan-larison-it-really-is-a-no-brainer.aspx

Here are some other eye opening low lights that were mentioned in Dunning"s column:

Three free throws by Niko Rocak to start the second half gave the Aggies a 36-34 advantage, but then disaster struck.

For the next 15 minutes, the Aggies had more turnovers than Betty Crocker, incredibly managing just one field goal in that span as their visitors raced away to a 53-39 lead and never looked back. Their biggest lead was 24 points entering the final minute.

...and this illustrates just how bad it got:

The Aggies made just four field goals in the second half, three of them by Connor Sevilla who led UCD with 15 points.

I'm going to assume that we won't see anything this poor again this season and that the second half last night was just one of those games that became a slow-motion train wreck for the Aggies. However, this team has some glaring weaknesses and I'm not sure where the help is going to come from.

By the way, Bob Dunning's Substack column, The Wary One, is well worth $5 a month to subscribe. His write ups following Aggie basketball and football games are usually online within a few hours after the game and he covers other Aggie sports as well. Of course, he keeps you up-to-date on things happening in the community too with his keen, wry sense of humor.

https://www.thewaryone.com

We left with about 3 minutes to go. We like to listen to the post-game, radio interview with Les after each game on the drive back to Sac but we can't seem to find the radio station that carries the Aggie game when KHTK 1140 AM is doing the Kings game. So we didn't get to hear Les but Bob Dunning had some quotes from Les in his Substack column:

"Our response was just not very good," said Aggie head coach Jim Les about Norfolk's second-half dominance.

"Instead of staying together as a team, we kind of splintered, but give them credit, they took advantage. That's a very good team that will probably win their conference and play in the NCAA tournament."

"It was their quickness and our carelessness," Les added.

"I hoped we would have put up a better fight, but this game will humble you."

https://www.thewaryone.com/p/norfolk-state-uses-second-half-burst?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2582284&post_id=152178784&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=31ratq&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I don't disagree that the Spartans took TY out of his game, but the whole team contributed to the prat fall that was tonight with 17 turnovers in addition to TY's 6. — Toke69

I think we are saying essentially the same thing, Toke. We are going to struggle mightily on offense if we can't get much offensive production from other players when teams are effective in slowing down TY. Last year we had Pepper and TY and that was a double barreled offensive punch along with Milling as well so, if either Pepper or TY was off their game, we didn't fall off much offensively. This year, we don't seem to have that kind of offensive support for TY so teams are going to make things as difficult as possible for him like NSU did tonight with the thinking that the Ags won't be able to make up for his loss of scoring if they slow him down.

The second half of this game was perhaps the poorest half of basketball I've seen an Aggie team play in quite a while. NSU had the Aggies frustrated and discombobulated...totally out of sync.

NSU exposed some glaring problems for the Ags tonight and future opponents who see the tape of this game will try and play us in a similar way. They essentially took TY out of the game by hounding him on defense and clogging up the middle so he couldn't drive the ball to the hoop. They played him very physical and, the more frustrated he became, the more he pressed and turned the ball over. TY has 14 TO's in the last two games and the Ags as a whole had 23 TO's tonight. GCU did the same thing in the second half but several other Ags filled in for the loss of his offense. They didn't do that tonight.

Teams are going to do whatever it takes to stop TY and, if they do and nobody else offers much of an offensive punch, we're going to struggle to win games. Teams are also going to try and make us beat them from the outside also because we have not shown that we shoot well from the perimeter. We also don't have help for Rocak with Borra and Mani injured and, so far, we've seen very little from the 4 transfers that Les brought in this year so depth appears to be an issue too.

It's early in the season and we've seen the Ags play really well at GCU followed by this mess tonight. So I hope this was just a bad night for the Aggies and Les gets things straightened out soon.

Ags down 16…really playing poorly …20 T0’s and counting.

Aggies have been out played on both ends of the court so far in the second half.

Whew!!

He slipped and fell flat on his face…weird fall…definitely hurt…

TY got injured on a freak fall and was in some significant pain.

I was surprised to see us picked to be in the championship game. However, I actually like our chances if we get a game at MSU in the semis. The weather would probably be a big factor with possible high wind, snow, sleet and/or frigid temperatures which would make the passing game difficult and that would make the running game more important for both sides. We played excellent defense against their run in the first game and I think we could do that again. So, if we make them more one-dimensional and dependent on the run and the weather makes their passing game difficult, I like our chances.

One of the two ESPN commentators on the Selection Show picked the Aggies to be in the championship game vs NDSU and the other had us making it to the semis against MSU.

We have a parking pass for the garage for the basketball games but, like you said, we'd have to get there REALLY EARLY!