I am so happy the Aggies win especially after seeing the 49ers get demolished up in Seattle!

It's amazing that the 49ers got as far as they did considering all the injuries they had this year. Seattle's defense is a beast.

I went back and watched the last 3-4 minutes of the game and, probably like Russ Turner, can’t figure out how we won. Take the lead on a Niko 3 pointer, which was sandwiched by 2 of his attempts that had the patrons of the fastbreak lounge ducking for cover. We missed 3 FTs in the last 90 seconds, any of which would have put it away. Great defense, and let them get TWO tip-in’s - one from a guard over our center! Run an inbounds play with 7?seconds designed to get it to Conner or Carl…
bad pass, but deflected right back to Cooper (who then misses one of those aforementioned FT’s).

But, it’s a win. Good, tough defense was the key again. Nice to see a BIG game from Omar especially with Cooper sitting a lot.

Watching on TV you can really see how teams are just beating up on Connor on offense. We’ll set up something for him where he is cutting through the key, and everyone in the vicinity lays an elbow on him. I think this is where not having a real inside threat hurts - Niko is out on the perimeter and his guy sags to clog things up.

Another observation that’s more obvious on TV - our crowd likes to show up late. At tip off, the seats behind the scorers table (mostly season tickets) are half full. By the 10 minute mark, it’s full. Cmon people - get there before 2! I know getting into the parking lot can be frustratingly slow, but plan for that! Be nice to have everyone there to greet the team during introductions!

Excellent observations, Mike. It was a very physical game and it was primarily our hard-nosed, blue collar defense that won the game for us. This team has totally bought into the kind of defense that has become our trademark under Jim Les. In the post-game interview, Les noted how pleased he was that the players didn't let down from playing tough defense after a TO, a poor offensive possession or missing a gimme shot.

I've become a big fan watching how hard the Ags work on defense. It's a thing of beauty and it expends a lot of energy so it's understandable why Les is running players in and out of the game so often. There's more going on from a coaching perspective than just giving the players a blow too. Les is also subbing in order to match up well with the subbing of our opponent. It's a great chess game to watch.

It was good to see Suljanovic finally get into the scoring column. At one point he had a wide open 3, thought about it for a long second and didn't take it and you could see his frustration at passing it up moments later at a time out. Then a couple of plays later he drained a 3 and then another and you could see his confidence coming back big time. He was doing a better job of mixing it up in the paint
also. I think he has a tremendous up side and it's going to be fun watching him grow.

There's a lot of balance in the conference. It's going to be a dogfight all the way to the end and we are capable of hanging in there with anybody.

To paraphrase Scott Marsh on the broadcast. I’ll miss not playing Irvine twice a year.

I'm hoping that we continue to play some of the better BW teams in our out-of-conference schedule once we move to the Mountain West Conference. I'd like to see teams like Santa Clara, St Mary's, USF and Pacific regularly on our schedule as well.

Les likes to talk about how good defense leads good offense. We scored 20 points off 14 TO's that we created. Point taken...

Nice points about the defense. I don't think I've ever seen such great defense by a college team before. All of the guys on this team play the one on one by staying very close to the player they are guarding. That's so essential because it only takes one player to let the offense break it down. Plus, their switches are incredibly fast. The fact that they could hold Irvine to only 30 points in the second half is strong evidence of this. Now if only the offense could turn the ball over less. On the other, hand, quite true that the defense converts turnovers by the other team into points.

we only had 10 TOs yesterday vs a tough defense. BIG improvement over Thursday when we had 13 in the first half - many unforced!

Yes, but it could have been even better. I just remember one stretch of three straight possessions late in the game when the team lost its focus, seemingly, a surrendered unforced turnovers on bad passes.

Irvine is a tough defensive team as well and they have decent size also.