The Aggies head to Los Angeles for a 7 pm match up with Loyola Marymount tonight in the 4156 seat Gersten Pavilion. The Ags played their best basketball of the season in a 70-68 loss at Arizona last Saturday while the Lions played their poorest game of the season in a 60-53 loss at UC Riverside. Other than the loss to UCR and a 82-58 drubbing at UCLA, the Lions have been one of the best teams in the WCC.
On offense, LMU scores an average of 71 ppg but they shine on defense and have held their opponents to an average of only 59 ppg and force an average of 16 TO's per game. The Lions score by committee with 6'1 Sr G James Bateman leading the way with 19.6 ppg and the huge 7'3 Jr post, Mattias Markusson, adding 10.4 ppg and 8 rebounds per game as well. It will be interesting to see how the Ags decide to defend the inside/outside threat of Markusson and Bateman.
The Ags have been without AJ John and Stefan Gonzalez for several games now and there has been no mention of when they might be back. As a result, Coach Les has been giving minutes to his entire bench and quite a few players have stepped up and played well especially Damion Squire, Rogers Printup and Matt Neufeld.
This game has the makings of a good match up between two defensive minded teams and should be a good one.
I think I saw that LMU is favored by 10. I'm hoping that the same Aggie team we saw in Tucson shows up tonight. My daughter (UCD Grad) and her best friend from HS (LMU grad) will be over watching it tonight, so hopefully it'll be a good competitive game. I'm looking to see if Squire keeps up his hot shooting. And it'll be interesting to see how TJ can finish drives with a 7'3" guy in the middle.
Poor performance by the Aggies on both ends of the floor. Cold shooting like we've seen most of the season and allowing 58% shooting on defense...that won't even give you a chance...
Les was noticeably calm during the game and in the post-game interview. In the post-game interview he just said that LMU was the aggressor early and when we were missing open shots it carried over to us playing soft defense.
We've seen a couple of good games from this team where they looked like maybe they were coming around but tonight's game was more of what we've seen most of the season. Our defense can be pretty good at times but offensively we aren't much of a threat at all. Les has some big problems on his hands and we aren't seeing many signs that things are going to get any better this season.
Teams do try and shut down TJ but he still manages to get his points in most games. LMU did a good job of keeping him out of the lane tonight and he had trouble trying to loft his lefty floaters over their 7'3 post. I'm not sure where consistent scoring is going to come from when TJ and Siler both graduate. Les needs to really step up his recruiting because we are not keeping pace with the better teams in the Big West.
It’s obvious that the team is in a very bad shooting stretch. It is totally different from last year. Something is very wrong with this teams shooting. So, what are some of the options? Let us start with mediation- yes Buddhist meditation. Accept: Suffering is inevitable; try and be a better person; practice- Sitting. Silence. Deep Breath. Put everything out of your mind except you totally relax, breathe in and out. Phil Jackson was a proponent. Jim Sochor practiced it. Both winners? Can’t deny that .. . . Well, what Else?
Why not? It couldn't hurt. Better recruiting by Les would help immensely too. I watched Santa Barbara beat San Francisco tonight giving the Don's only their third loss of the season. The Dons beat us by 34 on our home court. In just two years UCSB's coach has brought in outstanding talent.
Our program should be rising rapidly after 2 Big West titles and a trip to the NCAA but, instead, we've fallen off. Les likes to say there's a lack of effort problem with the team. I don't agree. I think we play pretty darn hard all the time but we don't have the consistent playmakers we need to compete with the kind of schedule we have.
Look what Hawk has done in just 2 years and what Jen Gross is doing year in and out. Men's basketball should be doing just as well and it isn't happening. Something is missing...
Big roster changes (lost year), then rebuilding year / 2 key transfers - Hawkins, stud defender and stacked team, and weak OOC schedule. ... rebuilding year, then Moneke, Shorts and weak OOC schedule. Tough OOC schedule this year.
The Chima & shorts year should have an asterisk as we didn’t have that combo for the second half of the year. I think there is a ton on talent in the BW but had we had that dynamic combo, I think we could have made some noise even in the tourney.