A strong best effort on defense could make the difference againstUCI

I agree with BlueGoldAggie that UCI will be heavily motivated to beat the Ags. I'm not sure how Cal Poly was able to pull off the upset considering they had not won a conference game before Thursday and were the visiting team. UC Davis will have to play their best to win, but they have a real shot. I wish more of their games were shown out here in Hawaii, but it's a lot better than in the past when the papers out here didn't show more than the score.

we'll have to battle without Goode tonight. He was in street clothes before the game.

HUGE WIN for the Aggies tonight! Come back from being down by 18 at halftime to win 74-65 to take over 1st place in the conference. What a game! GO AGS!

Wow! Big time win

Wow. In the driver's seat!

What a performance.

Are we an odd number year team?

This was a gritty win for the Ags. We dug a hole early and crept back to within 6 at the half and then Chima took over in the second half and away we went. It wasn't a pretty game, that's for sure, with 54 fouls called but the Aggies were the aggressors and benefited the most by hitting 35-46 from the line.

I love the resiliency of this team. Irvine has a lot of bigs and the Ags were limited with Goode out with an injury. Our big guys got some early fouls forcing Les to vary his lineup. Eventually Henn and Adenrele fouled out and White was trying to play through cramps but the Aggies gutted it out. It was a foul laden, physical game and the Ags were determined to win it and they did.

Irvine was led in scoring by two freshmen, Tommy Rutherford and Eyassu Worku, two players that Les had recruited but lost the Anteaters. They are a very young team with great size and very quick guards. They presented a tough match up for the Aggies but the Ags simply found a way to win.

I don't know what the official attendance was but this was the largest crowd of the season. My guess is the the attendance was somewhere around 3500-4000. This was a total team victory in every sense of the word. Great win for the Ags and first place in the Big West for now.

Official attendance was 3547. That's a pretty good crowd but I think we could see 4500 if this team keeps winning.

In the four years I was there, 4000 was a pretty strict ceiling for non-ESPN games. I think it got broken once for the regular-season finale against Irvine the title year and once for WBB vs UConn.

There's an ESPN wildcard opportunity coming up pretty soon, right? I'm assuming we get it easily because they seem to prefer us (perhaps as compensation for being left out of the socal ESPN3 package) and we're doing so well.

Was the seating only configured for lower bowl or were some of the upper bleachers out as well?

The seats were out on the upper west side but I don't think there were very many fans up there. I didn't really look up that way since we're in section 212 with our backs to those upper west sections. The area on the upper east side has been being used as a play area for kids with games and a inflatable bounce house and it's very popular with the kids.

Thanks for the nice recap, BlueGoldAg. I haven't been to a game in Davis since the last century, but I sure wish I could have been at this one. Long way to go yet, though.

really fun game to attend. good crowd that was loud throughout the 28-4 run that put us back in the lead, after trailing 18 in the first half. chima was very, very good in the 2nd half. once we reduced the turnovers, we got back in the game. kids went hard to the hoop and made the 'eaters pay with fouls and ALOT of free throws. good defense throughout. they held irvine scoreless the first few minutes of the 2nd half, allowing us to push the ball, and take the lead. looking forward to getting back up for a couple more games.

they had a team aggie reception between games and invited basketball alums and family to join. big turnout covering many years (we were sitting from a guy who played in 68, and near ryan howley). kevin blue and coach les addressed the crowd and gave really nice talks. les invited the alum into the team room for the final pregame talk, and that went over big with the former players. great event, and another example of how this regime is reaching out to the past to get them involved in the present.

Why was Garrison Goode out of action this time? He seems to be out of action a lot this year.

I don't know why this time. I saw him before the game and he seemed to be moving fine. Maybe it's still his abdominal strain.

My guess it's still the abdominal strain. Those things seem to take forever to heal up well.