Let's go Ags!

17-14 Stanford after one quarter. The Ags are staying close despite some sloppy play...7 TO's already. Morgan Bertsch has 9.

36-24 Stanford at the half. Jen Gross can not be happy with her team so far. Sloppy play (13 TO's) and sub-zero shooting 23%...it's a small miracle they are within 12. Stanford does not look head and shoulders better than the Ags; it's just poor play by the Aggies so far.

The Ags are really missing Nagel, Nafekh and Glianotti as no one can hit a 3 other than Bertsch and McKeown who are 2-2 each...everyone else is 1-13.

Stanford is running away with it. 57-34 after the 3rd.

I had almost forgotten what it was like to see an Aggie team get slaughtered; this week was a reminder. Brings me back to undergrad.

But I don't think/want to believe the sky is falling for the men or women. Looks like both of them were having bad days against quite good teams. (Stanford especially has an unrealistic height advantage on the Ags that Big West opponents won't have.)

Stanford routs the Ags 71-43. So both the men and the women have had very rough starts. While the women will not be happy with their performance, I don't think it was unexpected whereas the way the men lost was shocking.

Stanford has too much size and athleticism for the Aggies to handle and essentially took away everything inside. They outscored the Ags 38-12 in the paint and won the boards 50-25. The Ags had to settle for 3's and they only knocked down 8 of 31. Live by the 3, die by the 3.

There's a lot of work to be done if this team is going to contend for the Big West title. They have big shoes to fill with the loss of Gianotti, Nafekh and Nagel. This trio was poised, confident and deadly shooters. Tonight the Ags got only 11 points from their bench and 5 of those came in the final minute when both teams cleared their benches.

Jen Gross comments on the game:

"I thought we competed pretty well for the first half, but we've still got a lot of growing to do with this team," Head Coach Jennifer Gross said. "Our goal was to compete for 40 minutes. I thought we competed well in stretches, but we still have some work to do. Our team knows our mission is just to get better every single day and that's what we're going to continue to do."

"Stanford is really long, they're tough to score on, and they've got great length at every single position," Gross said. "I thought our offense was flowing a lot better in the first half. I thought we got pretty stagnant in the second half and were trying to take really tough shots. Part of that is Stanford's defense is really good, they were pressuring us a little bit."

"Everybody was disappointed, obviously, with the result, but we have a group that's really hungry to get better and there wasn't a lot of moping. It was 'hey, let's get back to work tomorrow' and we'll continue to get better and, hopefully, we can pick up a 'W' on Sunday."

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2018/11/7/womens-basketball-record-tying-night-for-bertsch-leads-aggies-at-no-7-stanford.aspx

This is really interesting:

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) -- In May, Tara VanDerveer brought UC Davis coach Jennifer Gross and top assistant Joe Teramoto to campus for a third time to teach the Cardinal the Princeton offense. They spent seven hours instructing the Hall of Fame coach, who then treated them to a night in San Francisco for the big assist.

Six months later Stanford used all of that knowledge to beat the Aggies.

"I told Jen before the game, `If we play well it's a credit to you," VanDerveer said. "... I almost felt like I was playing my sister. We're learning from the best."

More here: https://gostanford.com/news/2018/11/8/womens-basketball-opening-statement.aspx

Very interesting article. If you watch the Stanford offense you can definitely see some of the same plays we run. It's a credit to Coach Gross that she has established such good relations throughout the country. UCon came to the Pavilion a few years ago partly based on good relations between the two staffs.

As for the game itself, I guess this is what I should have expected. Not only do we have several new players at key roles, we have a couple of returning players that are now being counted upon to be focal points of the team. It'll take some time to meld it all together.

Go Ags!

Now if Gross can only snag a couple of UConn and Stanford quality recruits!

I and 20 other Aggie supporters attended the Aggie game... The first quarter was close and Bertch definitely came to play.. She was getting double and triple teamed at times.. The rest of the ladies tended to rush their shots... Free throw was off sync which was a bit unusual... Stanford was much more physical and as the game progressed the Ags got tired... But the positives.. Bertch, bessolo, and the newbee's along with freshman Makaila Sanders hitting a 3 was a highlight......

Yes, Stanford is long and physical and they're defense made things very difficult for the Ags. That said, as you noted, we tended to rush our shots and we shot poorly from 3. We needed to shoot a much higher percentage from 3 to stay within striking distance. We also put up some wild shots in close that should have been easy scores.

Bertsch carried the team in the first quarter. I'm a little concerned that we got so little contribution from the bench. We don't have the shooters we had last year with Nafekh, Gianotti and Nagel and we miss their maturity and poise at the moment. Hall and Bessolo will have to step up and bring some of that poise that was missing against Standford and, consequently, the TO's and rushed shots.

Hall and Bessolo are both very athletic but both can tend to rush things and miss opportunities as a result. If Nina makes a mistake or misses an open shot badly she will, at times, follow that up with a bad, quick foul in the back court as her frustration gets the better of her. She needs to be one of the leaders of this team, control her emotions better and play with more poise in situations like that.

There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that still need to come together and a team like Stanford can expose a team's shortcomings quickly as they did with the Ags last night. There is talent on this team but it will take some time for the players to gel, understand their roles and create a good chemistry. Right now we look a bit raw and out of sync.

yep agreed...The pieces of the puzzle need to fit together... not sure yet how it will work... but I have a high confidence in the coaches...