The Aggies finally secured their first win of the season with a nice 79-67 win over San Francisco last week. Now they have a chance to prevent a Sac State clean sweep this year in basketball and football when the Hornets invade the Pavilion at 6 pm tonight.

This should be an entertaining match up. The Hornets will be bringing their furious, run-and-gun style of offense and full court pressuring defense to Davis under the direction of their coach, Bunky Harkleroad, who is one of the few advocates of this style of basketball. The following is from the Sac State Athletics website:

In six years under Harkleroad, the Hornets have twice broken the NCAA Div. I single season records for 3-pointers made and attempted. The team has led NCAA Div. I in 3-pointers made and attempted in four of his six seasons and led in steals per game and offensive rebounds in two seasons while ranking in the top-10 in scoring, turnover margin, turnovers forced per game.

Harkleroad's Sacramento State teams have broken Big Sky season records for points, field goals, scoring average, steals, 3-pointers, and assists and have established new conference game records in points (132), steals (30), and made 3-pointers (25).

The Aggies have struggled this year to find a flow and consistency and Jen Gross has been experimenting with different groups of players on the floor in an effort to find the right chemistry. The Santa Clara game was the first game in which the Ags were firing on all cylinders on offense and defense and it appears that this team is more comfortable pushing the pace and playing an uptempo game. So this game appears to have all the ingredients for a track meet.

The Ags, who trail the all-time series 30-29, have won the last 3 straight Causeway games and have beaten the Hornets badly at their own game twice in the last 3 years when they scored 110 points in 2016 and 109 points last year behind 40 points by Morgan Bertsch. Both of those wins were in the diminutive Hornets Nest.

The Hornets shoot at will and don't care about percentages. The are averaging 34 three point shots per game but are shooting only 21.3% from beyond the arc and 32% shooting and are committing an awful 20.5 turnovers per game. On the other hand, they are forcing 15.5 TO's per game themselves. They will attempt to run the Ags ragged in and try to get them rattled and out of sync. It will be fun to see what Jen's strategy will be for her team manage the mayhem the Hornets want to create.

Live stream tv from Big West TV and Miles Roach will do the radio PBP call on KDVS 90.3 FM.

More about the teams here:

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2019/11/25/womens-basketball-causeway-cup-rivalry-comes-to-the-pavilion.aspx

http://www.hornetsports.com/sports/wbkb/2019-20/releases/20191125l2m4jf

Go Ags!