The Aggies will try to bounce back after a disappointing effort last night in a blowout loss to Weber State when they take on the Drake Bulldogs at 3 pm in the consolation bracket.

One of the concerns that Coach Les and his staff had about this year's team coming into the season was that they had a tendency to be very inconsistent. We got off to a pretty good start and built an early 11 point lead but, once the Wildcats made their first run as all good teams will, we essentially fell apart on both ends of the floor. Weber stayed hot and we did not respond and that was it. Game over.

I was cautiously optimistic about this team after the Santa Clara tournament. We played better than I expected overall and showed just how well we can play in the first half of the game against Northern Arizona. Then I thought we looked solid, poised and fundamentally sound against Sac State. Things were looking up; maybe Les had assembled a group that, although we don't have any particular stars, can play pretty good basketball by committee.

In last night's game we showed just how inconsistent we can be and some weaknesses that will be hard to shore up. We are a team that doesn't particularly have a "go to" player or two with the shooting skills to consistently ignite the team. Since we don't have that we struggle offensively when nobody is having a particularly good night on offense and we end up shooting below 40% like we did last night. And, oddly enough given that Les builds guard oriented teams, we don't appear to have deadly 3 point shooters like we had a couple of years ago.

We also got pounded on the boards 36-23 even though the Wildcats were not a huge team. We are simply not that big inside, and although our big men have some athleticism, the Wildcats punished us on the boards. Did our rebounding just fundamentally breakdown or did Weber State expose a serious weakness that we have in being able to compete with teams who are bigger and stronger inside?

Les says his teams lead by defense first. Last night the Wildcats shot 55.4% from the floor including 52% from 3. Was this just a case of running into a team that just simply caught fire or did our defense not play up to par or both?

I hope it was just the perfect storm combination of Weber State getting red hot while we just had a totally off night. But, my cautious optimism took a hit last night.

Go Ags!