The Aggies roll into Northridge today and put their unbeaten conference record on the line against the athletic Matadors. This game has all the makings of a very tough contest for the Aggies.
CSUN is coming off an impressive defensive effort on the road at Santa Barbara. They held the Gauchos to just 30 points for the game and 20% shooting. The Aggies, on the other hand, managed to beat Long Beach on Thursday evening despite a glaring 27 TO's. Big West teams have found that the Aggies are vulnerable to being pressured, trapped and double teamed on defense so we can assume that CSUN will crank up the defensive intensity today as well. The Ags can ill afford to throw the ball away 20+ times and beat a team as talented as the Matadors are especially on the road. It will be interesting to see what Jen Gross and her staff have done to find get her team back on track to playing focused basketball.
The Ags are a verteran team that has played with poise all season for the most part. The ideal scenario is to have the Aggies peaking and playing their best basketball by late February and early March. So one would hope to see the Ags improving game by game at this point. Instead, what is concerning, is that the Aggies have had to come from behind a lot in recent games and have shown a tendency to lose their focus and poise and make numerous TO's. I'm not sure why this is happening but it is something I'm sure Gross and her staff are seriously addressing.
The Aggies need to ramp up their defensive intensity and execute their offense with composed focus and crispness. They can not afford to continue to dig a hole and come from behind because of mental lapses and expect to keep winning. Hopefully, we'll see a laser focused Aggie team today playing like the talented, veteran team they are.
They are a very good team, 69aggie, no questioning that. The thing that concerns me is that you could see this coming. For several weeks now we have been turning the ball over and digging ourselves a big hole to climb out of. The team has looked unfocused for a good part of each game but, to their credit, have been able to come back and get the win. Today the odds of continuing to come back and win caught up with them.
CSUN is a pretty good basketball team and they played better today. The Aggies did a much better job today of taking care of the ball with 14 total TO's. That said, it was a TO on an poor inbounds pass with 18 seconds left and the Ags down 3 that pretty much sealed the deal..
I'm sure that the team is disappointed and that Jen Gross will sit down with her players and take a deep look about their goals and what it will take to get back on track and playing like a veteran team.
I with you there, Russ. This is an early gut check for the Aggies though. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of this team but they have been making too many mental mistakes and have not been the aggressor lately. Case in point: the first two baskets in OT by CSUN were layups by their small PG. She simply drove to the basket after getting a step on our taller guards and made 2 uncontested layups.
Quick guards are tough for us to handle but, when they do drive by our defender, the help needs to be there to contest the shot. That didn't happen twice in a row to open the OT period. Our back up help just stood there. We're a veteran team and that kind of defensive lapse just can't happen at crunch time. The players won't enjoy watching the film this week.
Time to learn and move on. We're still in the driver's seat.