So is Underwood hurt? I thought he was a prized JC player.

Didn't we have Chima for USF last year?

Yeah, I agree. I did like the way our guards doubled down on the big men in the second half, but it was way too late by that time. Honestly, it's been a long time since I've seen us give up so many easy buckets.

Clearly whatever was ailing TJ (and may still be) kept him off the practice court and put him a bit behind where he normally would be. Give him some time and he'll be back to the POY that we expected. Siler was ice cold, which happens with him sometimes, and then it seemed like he was pressing to try and make it up. Mooney also looked like he's been sidelined for a while (when was the last time he air balled a wide open three?) Gonzalez and Neufeld are quality players (Neufeld needs to stay out of early foul trouble), and Fuller and Nelson will be contributors over time once they get used to the D1 speed. Personally, I think Printup should never play the 4 spot. I know he was pressed into that last year because of Chima, and last night he played there a lot because of John being out and Neufeld picking up 2 quick fouls, but at 6'4", and on the slight side, he just can not handle that position.

Over the years, we've seen that this team only win against quality teams when the entire squad gives 100% the entire game. We are not talented enough to go through long prolonged slumps, especially on defense, and still win. Hopefully that's a lesson that was learned last night.

True Blue Aggie, I don't know if it's official that Jackson is gone (and I saw him in the stands last night and at last weeks exhibition game), but the fact that he's at school, but not sitting on the sidelines with the team and not listed anywhere on the roster leads me to believe he is gone. I guess we'll see.

On to Friday!

I haven't heard anything about Underwood being hurt, although I don't know for sure. He played some during the exhibition game, but he looked...stiff...for lack of a better term. Maybe that is injury related. No doubt he can sky (watch him during the warm up drills) and I would have loved to see him get some minutes with John out. We needed another big body inside.

From the Enterprise article:

“That was not up to the standards of UC Davis basketball,” said a disappointed Aggie head coach Jim Les. “Our response to the haymaker they threw at us early in the game is concerning. We just didn’t handle it well at all. They had better pace, better toughness and better execution and we didn’t have an answer for it.”

Les added that he has noticed a lack of consistency on the practice floor and worried that it might carry over to game situations.

“You have to give USF a lot of credit,” he added. “That’s a good basketball team and they really took it to us. We’ll find out in a hurry if this is something we look back on as a blessing because it woke us up or is it something we need to be concerned about.”

https://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/ucd-mens-basketball-falls-flat-against-usf/

Our size is going to kill us. We looked tiny on the court last night.

And outside of TJ, who is a scorer? It might be a long year...

The size we have this year is very typical of Les teams. In fact, with Neufeld at 6'11, Russell at 6'10, John at 6'8, Underwood at 6'8 and Goode at 6'7 we have more size that we normally do. Les tends to build his teams around guards first and foremost.

I'm going to say that the mess we saw last night was a perfect storm of everything thing that could go wrong went wrong. I'm not sure we could play any worse. Last year, as far as scoring goes, TJ averaged 14.8 ppg and Siler averaged 13.9 and those are decent numbers. AJ John came on late last year and ended up averaging 7.9 but I would expect more from him this year if he can overcome his leg injury.

We don't know that much about our newcomers but Stephan Gonzalez looks like he can put up some numbers and Matt Neufeld looks like he is agile enough to score in the paint if he can stay out of foul trouble.

We need to shut the door on that miserable performance against USF and focus on playing hard nosed defense and cohesive offense against San Diego on Friday. The Torreros were picked to finish ahead of USF in the WCC preseason poll so, if we don't make some big changes by Friday, we could see us get blown out again.