Things get a lot tougher for the Aggies tonight when San Diego State comes to town. The Aztecs are coming off an impressive 23-13 season last year and beat Cal State San Marcos 76-48 in their opener this year. The Aggies romped over NAIA Simpson University 93-36 in their opener last Monday.
The Aggies will need to take care of the ball against SDSU's aggressive defense that forced 28 TO's against San Marcos which resulted in 36 points of TO's for them. The Aggies did about the same as they forced 27 TO's against Simpson that resulted in 33 points for the Ags.
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.
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.
There were fouls called that I didn't see, that the players didn't see, that must have happened in a ghost game somewhere. It wasn't a fun game to watch because of all the fouls.
Tova had 26 points but only made HALF her free-throws. It really wasn't a good game for her with some wild shots that never should have been attempted.
Norris played well in the 4th quarter - but she doesn't seem as physical as she did last year - and she's not really a physical force inside.
Nya made some fine shots (worthy of TY) under the hoop - shots she's been attempting in earlier seasons but this time there's an authority to them - she knows where she is on the court and they're going in.
I felt the Ags were out of synch for much of the game at both ends of the court. Some of it was the officiating which was so incredibly anti-contact that it made a mockery of the game. Players on both sides were just astounded. The Aztecs, however, adjusted to it faster and better than we did.
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.