Wrong thread, whoops....

Definitely watching this one. After a few down performances (UCSB, Poly) it'd be nice to give a top notch effort on the road.

Go Ags!

big game tonight; win and you have a chance of a road trip sweep to get to 10-2, and 18 wins overall. a loss tonight will probably leave us (at best, depending on Sat outcome) in a tie for 1st after the weekend. our remaining schedule is much harder than Irvine's so we have almost no margin for error (unless we were to beat them again on the road). tough place to get a win.

This is definitely a big game for the Ags since we have such a tough conference schedule down the stretch compared to Irvine. The Aggies will need to have their defense playing at their highest level to try and slow the 49ers who lead the league at 81.6 ppg.

The Beach has weapons at every position and they spread the offense around a number of players. Loyola Marymount transfer guard, Evan Payne, averages 16.1 ppg followed guard, Justin Bibbins, at 16.0. USC transfer forward, Raschon Prince, averages 14.8 and is a load at 6'6 and 235 lbs. He also leads the league in rebounding with with 10.2 rpg.

Two players that Coach Les recruited but lost to Coach Monson have been instrumental in the 49ers attack this season: Temidayo Yussef is a wide body force in the paint at 6'7 and 250 and is averaging 12.3 ppg and Noah Blackwell, a 6'2 guard out of Woodcreek HS in Roseville, was averaging 13.0 ppg before going out recently with an injury. Their outstanding forward and yet another Loyola Marymount transfer, Gabe Levin, is also out injured.

The keys for the Ags will be to come out with good defensive intensity, take control of the pace of the game and protect the ball. We can't dig an early hole and expect to climb back out of it against a team that can score like The Beach. The Aggies will need to do their best not to get into foul trouble and send the 49ers to the line often since they are an excellent FT shooting team at 73%.

The Walter Pyramid is a tough venue for opponents to play in and it will take a superior effort by the Aggies to put this game in the win column. On the other hand, the Aggies have shown that they are a very cohesive and resilient team that has consistently found ways to win. If we bring our A game tonight we are capable of bringing home a victory.

The Ags are getting routed on the boards early on 15-7 in the first 9 minutes. That won't get it done.

The Ags trail LB 24-22 in a low scoring, defensive minded half of basketball. Both teams are playing well on defense but the Ags got killed on the defensive boards and allowed The Beach to gather in 10 offensive boards which led to them putting up 9 more shots. FT shooting continues to be an adventure for the Aggies also as they shot only 4-9.

It has been back and forth. Up 2 with 40 secs left

55-55 going to OT

Riggins just fouled out. 10 pts 12 rb. Glad to have him out of the way!

Yikes, two turnovers and down 4

Now down 7 with 2:19 to go

Officiating sounds really bad

64-69 1:02 to play, lbsu shooting free throws

Odd fouls against the Ags aside, better free throw shooting would've put this game away. Tough loss

LB runs away from the Ags in OT 78-69

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.

This was a hard fought, tough loss for the Ags on the road. We had the lead 55-53 but Evan Payne hit a tough jumper with 2.6 seconds left to tie it up. Then Darius Graham just missed sinking a half court shot by inches and the game went into OT. In OT LB hit a couple of 3's and got the benefit of two horrible foul calls and the Ags found themselves down 8 real quick and never got closer than 5 after that.

The big difference in the game was LB's dominance in the paint and on the boards. They outscored the Ags 46-22 in the paint and garnered 15 offensive rebounds. Our interior defense just did not handle their physical inside play.

The game was a foul-plagued affair with the zebras whistling 56 total fouls of which 31 were on the Aggies. Both teams were miserable from the FT line with the Ags shooting only 17 0f 32 for 53% and LB was only 1% better shooting 54% on 14-26. If the Ags had shot their normal percentage from the line they would have won the game but the same can be said for The Beach as well.

Siler Schneider led the way for the Aggies coming of the bench to score 21 points followed by Bryton Lemar with 15 and JT with 12. However, Schneider had 6 TO's and Lemar had 5 and that's way too many for two guards to have. Temidayo Yussef muscled his way in the paint to lead the 49ers with18 points.

One big concern for the Aggies of late is the absence of offensive production from Chima Moneke. In the last 4 games Chima has only scored a total of 35 points for an average of 8.8 ppg far below the 15 ppg he had been averaging. He is still grabbing rebounds and making some emphatic blocks but his shooting has fallen off to 27.5% on only 8-29 from the floor. Chima has been demonstrably frustrated lately and we need him to get untracked and give us some needed help on offense if we are going to stay in the title hunt.

The Aggies need to shake this loss of and get ready to play hard against a tough Fullerton team on Saturday night. Hopefully, we'll come home with a split.

BTW, Coach Bob Williams finally got his 500th win and the Gauchos beat Hawai'i 56-54 on a tip in with one second left in the game. Congrats to Coach Williams!

tough loss. when they hit the jumper with 2 to go, i told my wife 'its over'. that's tough to overcome in OT. the rebounding really hurt, especially early in the game when they were killing us with second chance points. seems like JT has played much better of late on offense. Chima's struggles are a real concern, although he did get 12 boards (if you're struggling to score, find other ways to contribute).

they had 26 points off of our turnovers. that's a killer. we had 14 in regulation, which isn't a huge number against Long Beach, but they seems much more efficient at turning them into points.

now saturday is a huge night.

Coach Les had a couple of interesting quotes in the Enterprise story about the game:

In regards to us not matching the 49ers physicality he said, “We knew they were going to be physical,” Les said. “I think J.T. really responded to the physicality and was active and aggressive. I didn’t think we had too many other guys running to the fight, and we’ve got to run to that fight a little bit better.”

Then when commenting on the terribly poor FT shooting he said: “Looking at our free-throw shooting, their free-throw defense was awfully good,” Les said. “At the end of regulation, we were 9 for 21. You can’t come on the road and put yourself in that kind of position. You’ve got to step up and make some free throws. If we do, we probably end this thing in regulation.”

The comment about the Long Beach FT defense being "awfully good" is pretty funny!

http://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/aggies-go-cold-in-ot-fall-short-in-long-beach/

I was impressed by those comments, because they were honest and also because he wasn't whining about the officiating, which he would have had plenty of reason to do. The offensive foul calls on us and the lack of the same calls the other way were hard to watch. Chima and JT both took what should have been charge calls inside towards the end of the game.

Watching the officiating was excruciating. Their little guards get the slightest contact, they go flying (because, well....they're very little) and the refs called it against the Ags. Yussuf drove in to JT and they "no-called" it twice. Keep in mind, JT is a big dude and doesn't flop - if he's back on his heels, something hit him pretty hard. JT also got an awesome block that the refs blew and called a foul. Really a shame when a bad job of officiating impacts the outcome of a game.

Enough whining, however. Make the damn free throws and we could be heading in to Fullerton 1-0 on the roadie.

Gotta beat those Titans to salvage this trip.

GO AGS!!

The blocking fouls against the Ags were tough to watch. I think the NCAA rules committee needs to take a long, hard look and reevaluating the call when the offensive player initiates contact into the defender and the defender gets called for a block. Defenders are almost always at a disadvantage since they are moving backwards and are reacting to the movement of the offensive player just to try a stay in front of him. No one can move backwards as quickly as a player moving forward. These calls are handcuffing defenders and hurt the game by making harder to defend in favor of point production.

It seems to me that, half the time, the refs don't really know what to call but they feel like they have to call something. A no call would be better than making a guess. It's verges on being ridiculous at times and hurts the game.

Regarding Chima Moneke's drop in scoring, have any of you who have watched Aggie games a lot this season notice if the other teams are defending him differently or is he just in a slump? I did not get to watch the whole game but I did notice he was leaving that baby hook short a lot.

From my perspective Chima's struggles are a little of both. Teams are definitely sagging on him and playing him very physical and the Ags are also seeing more zone defenses designed to stop our interior game. But, Chima has also been missing shots that he was routinely making earlier in the season and is probably pressing a bit right now.

He has been demonstrably frustrated with himself lately. He's and emotional player who thrives on being an impactful contributor to the team and has gotten a lot of attention in the press recently. All players go through tough stretches and I think Chima has the athletic ability to adjust to the way teams are now defending him and will get untracked soon. At least I hope so since well absolutely need his offensive contribution.

Thanks BlueGoldAg.

(Y)