Glad they are doing these free promotions. Makes it a lot easier to go even when you are expecting a lopsided game.

Dang, 88-39 with 7:30 to go. My son has been doing some training with Coach "Packie" Turner who played at Holy Names. Awesome dude with a great story.

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/sports/8117355-181/barber-fort-braggs-packie-turner

Also, nice to see Printup playing finally.

Holy schmoly, 101-41. Good to see everybody get a chance to play. Back to reality next week

The players and fans alike had fun at this game tonight. I really liked that the whole bench got a lot of minutes. Printup, Shaw and Ba all played nearly 10 minutes each. We haven't seen much of Printup this season which has been surprising to me. His right leg was wrapped so maybe he's been injured. BJ Shaw is a player I would like to see getting more minutes. He's very athletic, quick and has a nice shot. On to the conference play now...

That doesn't sound very fair.

So does the entire Big West conference play "beat up on the little schools" this weekend, right before conference play begins? UCI travels to Harvard, but the rest of the men's schedule is Westmont at UCSB, St. Katherine at CSF, Vanguard @ Cal Poly, Holy Names at UCD, St. Katherine (again!) at CSUN, CSULA at Long Beach and San Diego Christian at UCR. On the women's side we have Ottawa (AZ) at UCSB, Hope International at CSUN, Wm. Jessup at UCD, Holy Names at Cal Poly and Westcliff at UCI. Sounds like SEC football scheduling.

I think it’s chance to brush off some of the post holiday rust and to give the bench guys a chance to play. Minutes for those guys in conference play will be few and far between, but you need them engaged and energetic for practices if you hope to compete

These kind of games also give the little schools a chance to play up also against tough competition in bigger facilities. The game counts as an exhibition game only for Holy Names but it counts as a win or loss for the Aggies so it would hurt the Ags' RPI severely if they lost. Sure, Holy Names was outmanned in this one but this is the 9th time these two teams have played each other so they know what they're getting into when they schedule us and they want to play us each year if possible.

Obviously, the Aggies have trouble getting teams to come and play us in the Pavilion. This year 12 of our first 16 games were on the road and only 2 of our 4 home games were against DI teams. Les would love to have more home games against good competition but most teams don't want to play us in the Pavilion partially due to the fact that we generally have a good home court winning percentage. It's not good from the perspective of Aggie fans but all the road games really toughens up the team and builds great chemistry and that's very apparent when you look at how far this team has come from being blown out in Chicago in our season opener.

A couple of highlights from last night. First Manjon got two impressive breakaway dunks. He can really get up there for his size. But the best dunk of the night was from Adebayo. He made a nice move along the baseline and slammed home one of the best dunks from an Aggie in several years. Then in the second half he was all alone on a breakaway and pretty much air balled a dunk. But he didn’t give up as he raced back on defense and skied way above the rim to swat a layup out of bounds. That whole sequence got the bench and Les laughing with amazement. Once Adebayo gets more court time he will be an exceptional player.

I remember texting a friend after the Sac game ‘it’s gonna be a long season’. Since then, the young guys really grew up, and Mooney, Nuefeld and Gonzales have really been consistent offensive weapons. We play good D, protect the ball and do OK on the boards.

Hard to project the league due to schedules. A month ago I thought we’d be at the bottom (with poly); now hoping for a winning conference record and top half. I’ve enjoyed watching this group; planning out some Saturdays to come up and watch

I feel exactly the same way about this team. I often get frustrated in the early season with the teams that Les puts together: we generally lose a lot of the pre-conference games, don't look athletic or long enough to compete with the good mid-major teams, seem to rely on primarily on defense to win and can't seem to make baskets with a good percentage, but then we eventually come around, gel together and play pretty good basketball. I have to give Les credit. He builds very disciplined teams and gets a lot out of the players he's able to bring to Davis and his teams play as a team.

This year's team is very enjoyable to watch and I think the rest of the Big West is underestimating us. Our defense is solid and we play very hard from start to finish. Our offense is communing along nicely and we are play with better pace, good ball movement and more confidence. We will not be an easy out.

I was frustrated last season; had everybody coming back but never out it together.

The team seems to be jelling, could do well.

I don't buy all the excuses for a Big West team not being able to schedule home games. A few years back we ducked Sac State when we were down. Well known.

Do you think that having only 4 home pre-conference, home games is by design? Why would we want to do that? No program wants to go on the road for 75% of their out-of-conference games.

We’ve had 3 home-home with WCC teams the past two years, hoping Portland comes to us next year. We had a home-home one season with UOP; nothing with them since. Seems like we’re limited to Big Sky or WCC (besides SMC and Gonzaga) as choices, unless a team from the Midwest can combine us with another local school (NIU played at SMC)

IMHO its by design. Most Midwest and East schools need a presence on the West Coast for, among other reasons, recruiting and I don't just mean athletics. Recruiting students. Many Midwest and Eastern universities are suffering from declining enrollment. Not the UCs and California has a very big population and many very good kids cant get into a UC. They are ripe for out of state recruitment. Why does Harvard schedule games in SD? Recruitment and presence. So, I think Les has the “Band of Brothers” philosophy and travels games with all that adversity tends to bond the team into a cohesive unit of friends.Others have said that here, but I just agree with that. Plus, very poor student attendance for the end of Fall Quarter is a given. Again IMHO.. . . No insider info.

Les does like taking his team on the road during the pre-conference games because he does believe, like you stated, that it gives the team a chance to travel together, eat and sleep together and share the adversity of playing in tough environments. That said, when I spoke with him before the start of the season, he said he wants to play more home games especially against teams like UOP, St Mary's, Santa Clara, and San Francisco etc, but he said they are have trouble getting teams to come to Davis. They definitely did not want only 4 home games that included only two D1 teams. Hopefully, if we can continue to build a winning culture and raise our RPI, we'll be more likely to get those kind of games on a home and home basis.

The coaching world is small. When Les came to town, Coach Katz called to welcome him. Les didn't return the call.

A big part of scheduling is coaching relationships. Williams got Stanford here, Ham got Santa Clara.
A home and away with UOP, etc. is natural. Coach Stewart had Portland, Loyola (Md) and Dartmouth (H & A) at the Pavilion in 2008. We had Seattle here twice and Presbyterian (tiny private school). I'm told Coach Stewart had good relationships w other coaches.

Les by design scheduled one of the weakest OOC schedules in DI a few years ago. His OOC scheduling has improved. With the Golden 1 Center ending as a venue, that should mean the Hornets are here every other year. BTW, Sac throttled Idaho State last night, impressive defense.

Another avenue to explore might be pairing with other programs in Northern California to bring schools from other regions....as an example An Ohio State women's team traveled to California in December and played Stanford and Sac State. The visitors got two games, one of which gave thier reserves some considerable playing time. Perhaps Ags could work something with Pac 12, WAC, and WCC schools along those lines.

i agree; lthat's what i was mentioning above about UNI getting a game at St. Marys on the thursday before they played here. One of the bay area teams or Sac or UOP would make for a nice doubleheader for a team from the midwest.

Another easy option is a double header with Sac State every year, giving each campus a rivalry game at home.

Basketball should be significantly easier to schedule compared to football. 347 DI teams.

That's how we got UConn to come play the women a few years ago; they had a marquee matchup with Stanford the same weekend. Still bonkers to think about how we actually swung that.

We recently tried to schedule Sac for a home and home each year and Brian Katz did not want to do it. Also, the contract ran out this year for the Sac game to be played at the Golden One. Blue has been working to see if the contract can be renewed with the Golden One.

We will only have 12 out-of-conference games beginning next year with Bakersfield and San Diego joining he Big West which will give us 4 more conference games each season.

Gotcha. 6 at home, 1-2 easy, leaving 4-5 potential legit games. Les didn't endear himself to Katz, so not surprised.

i know we have beaten this poor horse beyond recognition..but....i thought it was interesting to look at Sac's schedule. 4 home games, Merced, Simpson and two Big West. i think getting teams here is a bit more challenging then we might think. i have to think attendence is part of that -> you must have to guarantee teams a payout for home-game onlys. that might explain why UCSB (9) and Hawaii (11) had some many home games, many (in UCSB's case) with teams on a one-off, home-only case.

Hawaii or Davis in January, might take some thought, lol.

Yeah, given a choice between a pair of games at say, UCLA and UCSB, or a couple at Davis and Sac State (particularly Sac's campus gym) I suppose most teams would take the former. I recall hearing Sochor once say that he was worried about rumors that UCSB was considering playing football at the DII level. Any time a DII level, UC eligible recruit saw Santa Barbara the recruiting war would be over.

If I recall correctly, always a big IF, UOP football used to schedule games at Miami or Hawai'i. Good recruiting tool for the Tigers. No matter what else happens you'd get a trip to Florida or Hawai'i.

I've found out that basketball scheduling is a lot more complicated that it seems it would be. The two biggest factors that influence who plays who and who goes where are 1) what will it cost? and 2) what will it do for our RPI win or lose. There is a 3rd factor unique to Davis also and that is how the Pavilion is managed. It's not under the administration of the Athletics Department and it is booked first come, first served. So there are often conflicts with the Pavilion's open dates and the dates teams are willing to schedule us and we can't hold a date for a team who is thinking about coming to Davis but is still working out their schedule. Once they have decided, the date they want may no longer be available. I've heard that Blue is working on this problem.

Our home court winning percentage works against us also. We are 54-15 at home for the past 6 years for 78.2% in the Pavilion. So we are winning nearly 8 of every 10 games in the Pavilion and we are 4-0 so far this season. Opponents know this and, since we often do not have a high RPI, they worry that they stand a good chance of losing on the road in Davis and, thus, their RPI can take a hit.

It's a bit of a Catch 22 for the Aggies: It's hard to attract good, non-conference competition to come here because we win 78.2% of the time in the Pavilion. So we end up playing fewer pre-conference games at home and have to go on the road a lot for those games where it is always tough to win. Then our RPI takes a hit when if we lose to teams that do not have great RPI's themselves. I guess the only way to really raise our RPI and reputation is to start winning against good competition on the road and practically run the table in the Big West.

If really good teams came to the Pavilion, Davis's winning percentage at home would likely be lower. :chin:

Good point...and, losing to good teams doesn't hurt our RPI as much either...