I wonder how sustainable/useful the prior student ticket distribution is. On one hand anything to artificially increase demand and desirability should be a good thing; on the other it might dissuade the procrastinators from bothering to show. Maybe they should emphasize that tickets represent priority seating rather than guaranteed seating to make sure students still feel able to decide to go on game day.

SDSU gives out student tickets in advance like that for every game, and there's even a line with like 100 students in it at the ticket office on Mondays preceding a game. Really creates a buzz on campus. On the other hand, it seems like people often don't show; the student section seems only half full most of the time.

I don't think our dropoff will be as terrible as it seems on paper -- another year of experience for Goode to back up Moneke in the paint will make our post play satisfactory, and Schneider could be a beast of a PG. The 2/3 position is a ? but I think UCD could still battle for the 4th or 5th seed in conference.

I think you mean the Cal Poly game? Irvine wasn't ESPN but it still had a great atmosphere that year. I see the team pulling at least 3k for senior night -- there will be some serious buzz among the students who stayed until the end last night. Glad to hear the Pavilion was rocking on Saturday regardless of the numbers.

Congrats to the 5 seniors who will be graduating -- they've done a lot for the program, including several who started their careers in a really bad season and from there took us to the success we've had in the past several years.

I don't know if Davis can ever be perennially top-tier in the BWC but hopefully Les can get the program to the point where it's always in at least the middle of the pack -- with decent seeds in the BWCT -- and can push for a title every other few years. For that matter, it looks like we're close to that point already.

It looked like about 5000 to me from the feed, a full lower bowl = 3000 plus about half of the upper tier would put it around there. Official attendance was 5873 but I bet that counts every single student ticket allotted, not number distributed or number scanned. Really a crime that there were any empty seats at all in the place, though maybe some of that was by design for fire safety and such.

Hopefully sometime you can get to an ESPN game on campus when you're visiting California. The atmosphere there is just unbelievable -- better I'd say than San Diego State's 12k arena. I think the Pavilion has really been a factor these last few years, particularly on the TV games, and hopefully attendance growth starts to self-perpetuate as Davis gets known as one of the toughest mid-major venues.

UCI barely survives CSUN to win by 3. Looking like a 2-horse race in the last week.

Also, can we take a moment to appreciate how far this program has come, at least relative to the rest of the conference? The first-ever ESPN game was against conference-leading Long Beach St where the plucky Ags played their best game of the year to almost shock the perennial contenders.

This game was the conference-leading Ags fending off an upstart 49ers team that we should have beaten on paper but almost got us with their hustle and capitalization off mistakes. Seems small but I feel there's a whole different vibe consistently going into these games as the favorite compared to when we were the feel-good underdogs. What a difference 4 years makes.

Hopefully the most recent generation of students from the ESPN/Hawkins era will stay heavily involved. The current seniors are the only remaining class who have even seen a truly bad MBB season.

What a game.

Not pretty but we got it done when it was needed most. Graham came up clutch in the final minutes.

What's with the seating arrangements? Band-Uh is on the opposite side that I'm used to and students are in the normal alumni section. Will this be the format for the ESPNU game or is it just a free-for-all right now?

Edit: Oh wait I get it, the BWTV cameras are just set up on the opposite side of the Pavilion. Makes sense now.

Can't make it; will be watching the actual broadcast of an ESPN game for the first time.

In case anybody else also doesn't have ESPNU, what I'm using is a Sling TV trial account, which is free for 7 days after you sign up. You don't even need to install the app; just use your Sling credentials to log into ESPN's streaming website after you get them.

Irvine was missing their PG and maybe somebody else the first game we played them, but we were Hawk-less. The differential would probably have been over 20 had Les not gotten T-d up in the final minute if memory serves. During the rematch in the regular season finale I think both teams were closer to full strength and it wasn't really a contest after Les made adjustments in the second half.

True, the whole playoff game would have gone differently had the Aggies been in the game. I never thought Mamadou was as big of a difference maker as he was hyped up to be, but maybe that's because Big West defenses got used to him in his second and third year. Still though, I think my point still stands that one way or another UCD would have faced a beatable and potentially underprepared 4-ish seed, and instead had to sit and watch a different team botch an upset opportunity.

Especially since Irvine -- whom we beat by 19 twice -- was 2 points and a questionable foul away from upsetting Louisville in the Ro64. Gotta think that Corey and/or the battalion of 3-pt threats could have clutched that one out in the same situation.

Also slight correction, it was Fullerton that beat Irvine, not Riverside. That's scary because CSUF just pulled a Cal Poly and beat the #1 team two games in a row, and are now in the hunt along with LBSU.

Aggies can clinch by winning out and would possibly get the title by losing one game that isn't to Irvine. If Aggies lose to Irvine they'd have to win everything else and UCI would probably have to pick up another loss, and even then LBSU or CSUF could take it. All other scenarios are too complex to pull from the top of my head.

In other words, just win baby.

Re: seeding, following MWC basketball this year has made me conscious of how poorly implemented the BWC tournament is.

SDSU struggling to get up to 3rd and avoiding falling to 6th at all costs feels way more critical to tournament success than UCD getting 1st instead of 2nd seed. No byes all but guarantees that even as #1 you'll see a team that can beat you before the tournament championship game. Could happen to the Ags even in the first round if Cal Poly is 7th.

Tough loss. Gave me flashbacks to the NDSU game(s). We still hold the tiebreaker over UCI but basically have to win out now.

I was actually hanging out with another UC Davis grad tonightt and she gave me a look of confusion when I asked her if she wanted to catch the end of the game. The athletics culture at Davis still has a ways to go.

Just learned that they'll be distributing student tickets ahead of time at the MU. First time I've ever heard of them doing this.

Campus Rec, because it's part of the ARC. The upper concourse is set up for badminton and ping pong during the day if I remember right from the one time I rented equipment. Also it's used for career fairs, student design showcases, high school cheerleading competitions, and pretty much any event that needs a huge floor space.

Good to hear Onyebalu is getting minutes; he'll be the only senior guard on the roster (and last remaining player who had minutes during the breakthrough season) next year. Unless Les has a redshirt or a new recruit in the wings I'd think he'd be first off the bench since Schneider, Hennings, and Printup are the only other three we've seen get reps.

In regards to the how-the-grants-work question, my understanding from having gone through the Financial Aid process recently is that the University gets from the federal government an 'Expected Family Contribution,' a number that indicates how much you're able to pay based on your tax returns. It's up to the university to subtract that number from cost of attendance and give you the rest of the amount, but it frequently doesn't go all the way, hence loans.

What I'm guessing they're doing is calculating the football recruits' EFCs, determining what grant they would get if they were a normal student, then applying a partial athletic scholarship to perfectly cover the remaining difference until the football player is only on the hook for the EFC, which can be close to zero. If the scholarship goes above that difference then it has to start cutting into the grant instead of the EFC.

From the UC Davis Scholarships website:

All UC Davis and outside agency/private scholarships are posted to the recipient’s UC Davis student account. When credited, the scholarship will first cover any unmet need; then, it will replace a student’s Self-Help expectation, followed by loans and Work Study. Grants and other gift aid will be reduced last, if necessary. Scholarships will be divided and disbursed evenly over fall, winter, and spring quarters, unless otherwise specified by the scholarship terms.

So it looks like they're treating an athletic scholarship as they would any other merit scholarship. Smart, but also kind of violates the spirit of the rules, which is to stop rich schools from crushing smaller schools -- I can't imagine Weber State or Northern Colorado have as robust need-based programs as UCD does, so this kind of adaptability might be more difficult for them.

Any way to build some sort of permanent seating structure on the north end, with a gap underneath for concessions? The roll-away bleachers waste a lot of space by eliminating all the space beneath them, but apparently Campus Rec doesn't need that end of the Pavilion because they got along fine with the bookstore there. So less of a need for new seats to be temporary I would think.

Might be a hard sell to higher-ups to put in new seats at the Pavilion that in previous years would have remained empty for most of the season. Of course, if you want to be big-time then you have to start thinking big-time.

I believe this is true, but don't have solid evidence. Even since I started going to Davis in 2012 the threshold for "sellout" seems to have gotten lower, from 6k+ to 5.5k or so. (Obviously they can tremendously tweak those numbers.)

5000, 6000, whatever. Just pack the Pavilion! Let's show everybody that we deserve this, as we always do on ESPN nights.

In the four years I was there, 4000 was a pretty strict ceiling for non-ESPN games. I think it got broken once for the regular-season finale against Irvine the title year and once for WBB vs UConn.

There's an ESPN wildcard opportunity coming up pretty soon, right? I'm assuming we get it easily because they seem to prefer us (perhaps as compensation for being left out of the socal ESPN3 package) and we're doing so well.

Was the seating only configured for lower bowl or were some of the upper bleachers out as well?