Wow...huge upset...

EWU 43 Northern Colorado 15 - Final
Montana State 49 Sac State 7 - Final
Idaho State 43 Weber State 35 - Final

Curt Cignetti left James Madison to become the HC at Indiana and he brought 13 JM transfers with him. The #8 Hoosiers are 9-0 and currently are leading 14-3 early over Michigan. If they win today they will be the first Indiana team ever to get to 10-0. Cignetti is the first, first year HC to win his first 8 games. I think this story says something about the quality of the good of coaches and players who were once in the FCS.

It took Montana State less than 1 minute to on their first possession to go 89 yards on 3 rushes to go up 7-0 against Sac.

There were a LOT of fouls for sure. I felt like SDSU was much more physical from the start and was willing to foul in the paint to prevent any easy buckets inside. I think they just felt that they had enough depth that they could just play very physical and aggressive without really worrying about too many players getting into foul trouble.

Too often, one of the Aggie players will do all the hard work to get in close to the hoop only to then throw up a wild shot that doesn't even hit iron. We see that occasionally in the men's games as well. It's not easy to be able to put the ball up softly and accurately with a couple of taller players hanging over your head and banging you with their bodies. I think that the only way to get better at that is to practice getting shoved and bumped over and over again in practice while putting up shots. Easier said than done though.

Great story!

This is a huge game for the team and the program and a great opportunity to really make a statement in the FCS. It will be challenging to get a win at Wa-Griz but, if we bring our A-game and limit our mistakes, I think we can come away with an impressive win. GO AGS!

11/08 games:

Stanford 80 Fullerton 53
BYU 86 Riverside 80
South Dakota State 80 Long Beach 79
Irvine 66 Loyola Marymount 51
Hawai'i 96 Life Pacific 61

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.