The Aggies squeezed by a very efficient and youthful Hawai`i team to win 76-70. I will not reiterate any of the stats as they can be found online, but the clear standouts for the game were Chima Moneke for UC Davis and, for Hawaii, Noah Allen, a UCLA senior transfer. The one negative was the officiating as 52 fouls were called. I noted that whenever a charge/blocking situation arose, the refs called it blocking, plus there were a lot of ticky-tacky fouls that really disrupted the flow of the game. UCD played a solid man-to-man defense almost the entire game, only twice going to a three-quarter court 1-2-2 zone press collapsing into the half court zone. Otherwise they focused on keeping Hawai`i’s perimeter shooting in check, holding their 3-point expert, Jack Purchase, to only 1 of 5 shooting, many as the shot clock was winding down. Hawai`i got a lot of good looks in the paint due to some good pick and roll action and interior passing between their front court men. If they had made all of them, they wo0uld have won the game. As it was, it was close throughout, with no team ever gaining control of the game. The final score was the Ags biggest lead. They went into the half down by one, but largely due to poor perimeter shooting from about midway through the first half things improved in the second half as UC Davis lead almost all of the second half and got some clutch threes down the stretch from Darius Graham and Lawrence White.

This is the third time I have seen Moneke play and the first time in person. From my 50 years now of watching Aggie basketball, I’m already willing to say that he is their best big man ever. I do need to note that the Ags were division II for most of those 50 years.