Funny that the Big Sky is thought of as a high scoring offensive conference. Weber, Montana, Sac, and Montana State have clearly the best defenses in the league and not surprisingly are at the top this year. Weber, Montana and Montana State all out-physicaled the Aggies. I think to be consistently at the top, they are going to have to get more physical on both sides of the ball and decrease points scored against them.
the Aggies could not get over the hump with any of the good teams they have played this year, so they really haven’t deserved an opportunity to be in the playoffs. Didn’t put away Poly or SUU either. No doubt a much tougher schedule this year but just lacking this year.
Eastern Washington has had a somewhat similar season. If they had a defense as good as Weber,sac,Montana, or Montana State they would be in first place. They are struggling to beat Poly. 42-35 in 4th.
Ok the good:
* Not bad run D most of the time
* Good turnout on the West side as has been the case for at least a year now
* MUCH improvement on the penalties side. I think we got two flags the whole game?
* Ref's mic kinda worked
The bad:
* Yet another team that is just faster and tougher. Are the academic requirements really that strict for recruiting that we can never put better athletes on the field than a school with 1/5 our endowment that has blizzards?
* Tackling apparently is not taught at UCD and has not been since I was a sophomore at least
* Utterly vanilla, ineffectual offense. Where was the sweep? The double pass? The wildcat? A handoff to any TE or FB just to get that one or two yards when we needed it?
* Aggie Pack sounded like a library. I didn't see anything resembling cheers, noise on third downs, Aggie first down celebrations, you name it. Does the Aggie pack leadership even exist anymore?
Hawkins' job shouldn't be in question because it's early and he's done so much to raise the program's profile but both O and D coordinators need to be on the hot seat IMO. Same with whoever's in charge of marketing to students
you are limited at Davis with student excitement - it is a cultural thing. Poly attendance has been bad this year (although team has been bad for years now) and when I watch Sac games on tv it seems the stands are empty on visitor side. The Montana Schools have a long standing good fan base. I think Californians by-in-large may be too culturally sophisticate to be big college football fans.
This has simply been a very disappointing season. We haven't beaten any of the quality teams on the schedule and were extremely fortunate to beat San Diego.
I really did not like the call by Hawkins to go for it on 4th down at our own 37 with a minute to go in the 3rd quarter while leading 17-14. We had very little to gain and a whole lot to lose. MSU stuffed our run and got the ball deep in our territory and, even though they we're only able to kick a FG to tie the game, MSU got the momentum and it turned the tide of the game. It was a bad decision anyway you look at it.
We're playing for pride now. I just hope we don't get embarrassed by Sac next weekend.
Davis is not a "sports town" and the majority of students could care less about Aggie Athletics. A good portion of the fans that show up at the football games are holdovers from the D2 days. Putting a lot of fans in the seats is a tough sell at UCD and in the community.
I'm coming from two years at SDSU which definitely did not have this apathy. Sure, I can accept that the culture is different there but my friends at Cal seem to have much more school spirit, and despite being P12 they're not really any more relevant than UCD.
I honestly believe we can get to the point where we can fill a single Aggie Pack section and get them active the whole game. However, it will take a lot of vision and effort but I think it will pay dividends.
South Dakota State? Agreed - Need to set reasonable goals given the region. Games I have watched last couple of years showed poorly attended Cal and Stanford games. I think a section or 2 of Aggie Pack is reasonable. Don’t know if this generation ever peels attention away from phones these days.
San Diego State I mean. They/we can get a student section 2-3 times the size of the Aggie pack to the stadium that's 15 minutes away from campus easily, generally to play obscure G5 and FCS teams. And have several hundred students tailgating for hours before the game. Again, I only think a microcosm of that is reasonable at Davis but we're not even there yet.