The Aggies head for the islands for a 9 pm game with Hawai'i today at the Stan Sheriff Center in Honolulu. The Rainbow Wahine are always tough at home so the Aggies will need to continue to play well to bring home win number 21. The Ags are currently atop the Big West standings at 10-1 followed closely by Irvine at 9-2 and these two teams will tangle for first place next Saturday in Davis in the first game of a double header with the men.
The Ags won the first contest over Hawai'i 76-52 back on January 6th in a game in which they were firing on all cylinders and they are coming off a stellar 79-49 shellacking of Long Beach last Wednesday in the Pavilion. Jen Gross wants her team to continue to improve in order to be peaking by the time the Big West Tournament arrives and the Ags seem to be on track for that to happen at the moment.
I expect today's game will be a good road test for the Ags and they'll need to be focused and continue to play excellent basketball like they have lately. The table will be set for a huge battle next Saturday in the Pavilion with Irvine if the Ags are victorious over Hawai'i and Irvine beats Long Beach tonight. First thing first though is for the Ags to take care of business tonight.
The Aggies move to 22-4 with a 68-56 win over Hawai'i. Morgan Bertsch scored 27 and Pele Gianotti had 13. Although the Ags shot 51% for the game but they took their foot off the accelerator and got outplayed by the Rainbow Wahine in the second half.
The Aggies were up by 25 with 3:26 to go in the 3rd quarter and Hawai'i kept chipping away and pressured the Aggies into ragged played and got the lead down to 11 late in the 4th. The Ags are still inconsistent in handling the press and, although they continue to win, it is an area that causes them problems and they are likely to see more of it.
Blue, i disagree. We did well with the FCP. Hey, you might be disappointed with this win margin. But when your team is up by 25 points any team will tend to relax a bit. My concerns: poor rebounding and very poor shot selection by some of our new players late in the game.
I looked at the stats and we only had 10 TO's so I think you're right that we did a pretty good job of taking care of the ball. What concerned me is that we got away with quite a few "near TO's" also on ill-advised passes and that we began to get rushed which, as you noted, was resulting in some poor shot selection. I thought that Hawai'i was getting after us with more energy than we were playing with in the second half and they reduced our lead by 14 points in 8 or 9 minutes of play.
We have had a few games lately where we let some big leads get away from us and yet we still eventually won. I just think it's a concern. I don't think that Jen Gross wants to see these big leads slipping away especially with the kind of competition that this team will face in the post-season. We won't be able to get away with careless passes against really good competition.
I guess I'm old school in my thinking but, if I were a head coach, I'm not happy if my team relaxes and let a big lead dwindle because the opponent is playing with more aggression and energy. I want my team to keep the pedal to the metal with a hard effort from start to finish.
I hope I don't sound overly critical. I just want this team to keep their energy and focus high and continue to improve. They have a chance to do something very special this year.