I thought Saturday's game was one of the stranger games that I've seen from the Ags in a while. First, the coach sat two of his senior starters on the bench for most of the second half. I get that Schneider (5 2nd half mins) can be inconsistent, but Goode (3 2nd half mins) is a guy that the coach usually brings in to settle down the defense. Second, Les usually does not stick with a lineup that is not playing good defense, even at the expense of the offense. I don't know the exact amount of time, but he used TJ, Mooney, Gonzo, Printup, and John/Neufeld lineup for a large part of the second half when the game started getting out of reach. I kept waiting for Siler and Garrison to come back in to try something else, but it didn't happen. Third, I get that Les might of liked Printups' defense on Purchase, but it's asking a lot of a guy that has only averaged 13 mins/game (and a lot of that in clean up time) to all of a sudden produce in crunch time.

So, was Les trying to match up with Hawaii and thought these players truly gave us the best chance of winning? Or was he sending some sort of message to his team by sitting two senior starters? Or something else? I've watched probably 90% of the games that Les has coached here at UCD and this was truly one of the more oddly coached games.

I was about to comment on Siler and Garrison being benched in the second half as well. I agree. It certainly was weird seeing the players Les chose to play for nearly the entirety of the second half.

My guess is that Les was unhappy with what he saw in the first half especially on the defensive end and was sending the team a message essentially saying, "I'm going to see who really wants to play." Hawai'i shot 56% overall for the game and that'll raise Les' blood pressure through the roof.

I listened to the brief post-game interview with Les by Scott Marsh. Les was very brief as usual when he is upset after a poor performance by the Aggies although he has really toned down his rhetoric after he publicly went overboard with his frustrations about the team earlier this year. He just said he was surprised how poorly we played against the zone since they had prepared for it all week. When Marsh commented that Neufeld and John both had nice games he responded, "Well for every plus there's two negatives that cancel out the positives." End of interview.

You could tell that Les was beside himself. Marsh seems almost intimidated anymore to ask Les questions when he's is upset with team's performance after yet another loss. In the post-game interview after a loss a few games ago Les said, "We're all emotional right now so I'm not going to say anything."

It's obvious that the team and the coach are not in a good place at the moment. DrMike is correct that there's still time for this team to finish in the top half of the Big West. I think they have the ability to do that.

Les and the team need to put all these losses behind and take it one game at a time all the way to the end of the season. No one seems to be having fun right now and that's hurting the chemistry of the team. The fun has gone out of the game and that's dragging us down. Carrying these losses around like a dead weight won't help things get any better.

I'm with you on everything you said. If at the beginning of the season, I'd have probably predicted losses at beach (though I might have gone the other way on this one), at UH, and at UI. Even home to SB I might have guessed a loss. So I'm not really surprised at the results. It's the upcoming games at UCR and Poly that are almost must wins. And a good showing at UCSB would help too.