Hope we get a good holiday crowd.

WSU certainly wasn't as good as everyone thought but at the time they had a lot of momentum and a large raucous fan base behind them. It was a tough environment for the Ags to play in. I thought the Aggies' execution on offense and defense was one of the best efforts I've seen from an Aggie team in a long time. Good shooting and tenacious defense. They really put it all together and caught Wazzu off guard but the Cougars did fade badly after the loss to the Aggies.

Right now, as far as the Big West goes, I think the Aggies could be considering one of the top 4 teams with Santa Barbara looking like the the early favorite. It'll be a dogfight as usual. The Ags have just been far too inconsistent, on offense especially, to be considered an odds on favorite.

That's a good point, 69aggie. They'll probably face a similar situation in the Big West Tournament depending upon their seeding albeit they won't be playing across the country with 3 time zone changes. The Big West Tournament can be exhausting especially for those teams that play 3 games in 3 days. Brutal!

6-4 is is pretty good. Two wins against Pacific is tough to do and the win at WSU was right up there with our best wins ever.

Here's a breakdown of all the Big West OOC games through December 28th that I found over on the Big West Boards:

Big West overall: 54-65

vs. Division I: 40-65

vs. America East: 0-1
vs. American Athletic: 0-1
vs. Atlantic 10: 1-0
vs. Atlantic Coast: 0-2
vs. Big 12: 0-2
vs. Big Sky: 10-10
vs. Big South: 0-1
vs. Big Ten: 0-3
vs. Colonial: 1-1
vs. Ivy: 1-2
vs. Metro Atlantic Athletic: 0-1
vs. Mid-American: 0-2
vs. Mid-Eastern Athletic: 0-1
vs. Missouri Valley: 1-0
vs. Mountain West: 1-8
vs. Ohio Valley: 0-1
vs. Pacific-12: 4-12
vs. Southeastern: 0-3
vs. Southland: 1-0
vs. Southwestern Athletic: 3-0
vs. Summit: 3-1
vs. Sun Belt: 1-1
vs. West Coast: 11-7
vs. Western Athletic: 2-5

home: 33-14 (19-14 vs. D1)
neutral: 7-8
away: 14-43

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/bigwest/thursday-december-28-2017-games-t21605-s20.html

The Aggies fall 70-62. After tying the game at 51 Bre Cavanaugh took over canning step back 3's and the Rams continued to manhandle the Aggies on the boards. The Rams had their top 3 players play all 40 minutes and they scored 68 of their 70 points. Pretty amazing trio of players for Fordham.

The Rams have not been a prolific offensive team this year only scoring over 70 points in two games this year but the Aggie defense could not gets stops when they needed it. Fordham also had 11 offensive rebounds.

The Aggies have now lost 3 out of their last 4 games. Overall, they have won the games they should have won and early on beat WSU and St Mary's. Lately, however, they have struggled especially on offense against good competition. We'll have to see if they can get back up to playing as well as they are capable of playing against the Big West.

The Ags are now going to enjoy the Big Apple by attending the "The Lion King" tonight and have a day of sightseeing tomorrow before a late flight back home.

The Rams come right back and run away to a 10 point lead with only 1 1/2 minutes left.

Aggies battle back from 9 down to tie the game at 51 with 5 minutes to go! Go Ags!

Cold shooting and poor rebounding are plaguing the Aggies and Fordham takes control 42-35 at the end of the 3rd quarter.

As advertised, G'mrice Davis took over the game for the Rams in the second quarter and exerted her will on the boards (8 rebounds) with her aggressive play to take a 28-25 lead at the half. The Aggies will need to match Fordham's aggressive play to stay in this one.

17-10 Aggies at the end of the first quarter.

I thought the men's schedule was much better this year as you noted. None of those games were blowout loses and a couple more of them were there for the taking but we didn't close them out. I think the holy school games are there mostly because no one else will come to the Pavilion although Les has said that he likes to give these local area teams a chance to play up against us in a facility like the Pavilion. The folks over on the Big West Boards generally think Les purposely makes a weak schedule to pad the win loss column. I don't buy that though.

Nice article. He always cared a lot for his players that's for sure and he has certainly proven himself to be a great RB coach.

The Aggies took care of business in game #1 of the Fordham Holiday Classic by knocking off Yale 71-61. This is a good win for the Ags playing all the way across the country in the frigid Bronx.

Yale is a good team and they apply a lot of pressure on defense and, they were true to form today by forcing the Aggies into 22 TO's. Even so, the Ags broke the press often for transition buckets and forced 17 TO's of their own.

Rachel Nagel was back in good form and scored 17 to lead the Ags followed by Cierra Hall's best offensive performance with 15 points. She also pulled down 9 rebounds and, along with Nina Bessolo, hounded the Bulldogs with pressure defense. Marly Anderson played great defense in relief of Morgan Bertsch while Morgan was limited with fouls.

The Aggies came out in the second half and played solid basketball to break open a tight game and led by as many as 18 with 3:35 left. Yale closed with a flurry of buckets in the final 3 minutes to pull within 8 but the Ags maintained their poise and put the game away.

The Ags will now play the host team, Fordham, for the title tomorrow. The Rams trounced Hartford 69-44 today. The game will be broadcast live by KDVS 90.3 FM. The game call by Greg Wong and Max Agress is outstanding and very professional. Great job by those two!

52-43 Aggies at the end of the 3rd quarter.

38-33 Ags at the half. Very competitive ball game and Yale's pressure has bothered the Aggies and the Ags have 12 TO's. The Aggies have forced 10 TO's themselves. The team who takes care of the ball and plays better defense will win this game.

Aggies take a 25-18 lead after the first quarter.

Well, 69aggie, I played for several "old style" coaches many years ago who yelled, cursed, shamed and, at times, even grabbed players by the jersey or face mask and got up in their faces. They thought that intimidation was the way to motivate the players. It drove me out of sports.

One baseball team I was on lost only one game all season. The coach was a tyrant and I hated playing for him even though we were champions. Playing for him wasn't any fun. I loved winning but you felt on edge every game fearing that if you screwed up he'd chew you out or pull you out of the game and embarrass you in front of the fans.

I also played for a coach who always gave us advice and encouragement when we made errors. It felt good to play for him and we played hard for him.

I'm not saying any of our coaches do anything like that; it wouldn't be tolerated today. I just think you can get more out of your players, whether it's a large team sport or a small one, by building great relationships with your players and giving advice and encouragement rather than yelling and fuming on the sidelines.

Just my opinion....

I don't think the guys hate Coach Les by any means. We have seen defections from the team under Les and we know that not every player is going to be comfortable with his style of coaching but players leave for other reasons also. He demands a lot of his players both on and off the court which is as it should be. Could he get the same results and tone down the intensity and stomping along the sidelines and not risk discouraging the team's morale? I think he could but Les is a fiery, competitive coach. He was an undersized player without great speed in the NBA but it was his competitive nature that allowed him to succeed. So I don't think we'll see him dial down the intensity anytime soon.

Coach Sochor got incredible results from his teams and he wasn't scowling and barking along the sidelines. Many players respond well to Sochor's positive coaching style. There's enough to pay attention to on court without seeing an exasperated coach on the sideline and have that getting into your head. Just my 2 cents worth...

Ags go down 72-62 in OT. Ed Polite single handily beat the Ags in OT when he took over the game and scored the first 11 points of OT.

We had a great chance to win this one in regulation up 3 with under 30 seconds. TJ's shot gets blocked and Hicks nailed a 3 to tie it and then we turn the ball over on the last possession.

The Aggies never found a good offensive rhythm and, with what has been the case all season, we struggled to shoot well outside of the paint. Siler Schneider was only 4-16 today after going 3-10 yesterday. We will not be a front runner in the Big West unless we find some good outside shooting.

In the post game interview Coach Les faulted defense for not getting the clutch stops when we needed to. He rarely has much to say when our offense struggles and shoots poorly from the perimeter. Really, I guess there's not much you can do about the shots not falling but you can always look at where the defense broke down. From Les' perspective, if you execute on offense, the ball either will or won't go into the bucket. There's not much else you can do when players are shooting poorly but you can always do something about how you defend.