Made it official today

He looks like he's a perfect fit for our scholar baller team. He had offers from Air Force, Northern Colorado, South Dakota and Denver as well.

Official Aggie Announcement:

DAVIS, Calif. – Caleb McGill, a 6-foot-7 forward from Aurora, Colorado, signed a National Letter of Intent with UC Davis basketball during the fall window, as announced by head coach Jim Les.

"On the court Caleb is a highly skilled and versatile forward. His ability to play different positions on the floor will be a major asset to our program. At 6'7" he can shoot from the perimeter, play off the dribble, post up, and is someone that we can run offense through because of his high IQ and passing ability," said head coach Jim Les.

"We also love his competitive fire and work ethic – things that have helped him enjoy a tremendous amount of success at the high school level, and will lead to continued success for him in college."

"During my official visit, I felt at home with the team, and felt the coaches were very genuine and honest people that I could see myself playing for in the future. The campus and people that surround the program all just felt like home to me," said McGill.

More here: https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2019/11/15/mens-basketball-caleb-mcgill-signs-with-uc-davis-during-early-period.aspx?path=mbball

Well here's some more height that just signed for 2020. 6'10" 240lb transfer from Portland. This tweet lists him as a grad transfer with two years of eligibility (which I believe means he's eligible to play next year). I'm pretty sure he was at the Long Beach game.

this is the guy i heard about at the football banquet. not sure what the transfer rules are, but he is a mid-season transfer (played in 13 games) so he might be eligible in the second half of next year.

Yeah, I'm not sure either, but sitting out through the fall quarter next year seems logical. BTW, he scored 4 points on 2-3 shooting, with 3 boards and 2 blocks against the Ags this year.

Looks like the guy we saw, yeah. Cool!

Outstanding! He reminds of Neufeld but looks to be a bit more mobile. It even looks like he might be a lefty but he shoots well with both hands. He has that short hook shot like Neufeld has too.

As a resident in Japan, this is outstanding news! Basketball here is growing rapidly ever since Rui Hachimura’s dominance at Gonzaga and in the NBA. The Japanese media will definitely keep an eye on him. Looking forward to see more of him and possibly some footage of Aggie basketball!

Looks like we lost one of our red shirts. Wesley Harris is transferring out per verbal commits. Good luck to the young man wherever he ends up.

Seems like we should see a couple of other transfers coming into the program (or late HS commits). We only have 2 confirmed coming in (Hogland and McGill), while we are losing 5 (Mooney, Gonzo, Printup, Neufeld, and now Harris).

And here comes more size, 6’11”. I’ll see if I can find some video

Here is video of his senior year

Looks like tore his ACL in January so he’ll sit out next year. Good foot work and can move well for a big guy.

Great! He's pretty agile and shoots with either hand. He also had offers from Mercer, Towson and Oral Roberts.

Shows how the game is evolving. 6’11’ kid with touch and nice feet, and no offers from even a top mid-major. Granted the ACL Is a scare, but the post player is a not a big part of today’s game.

Sorry to hear Harris is leaving. Good size and he was a JC scorer. Wish him well

I was on a zoom conference call that included Les. Sounds like we’ll hear another signing this week. I don’t think he was referring to Hoglund, but we’ll see

It's great to hear about these recruits but I think there is a good possibility that we may not have any fall sports this year. I'll be completely bonkers by then....

That’s good to hear. We seem to have addressed, to a point, our size issue, with Hogland coming in, Borra when he is healthy, and Aaron Murphy coming off his red shirt year. But we lost a lot of perimeter offense to graduation so maybe it’ll be someone who can step in and contribute there.

Kid with good roots, so to speak.

Definitely exciting to see the additions of the big men, this should really give us a new dimension as they get acclimated to the program and give Coach a lot of flexibility and options on both ends of the court.

We all know Les loves the flashy perimeter game. It’s a great crowd pleaser when you make the three. But when you don't and we miss the open three- its very bad indeed. It’s like oxygen leaving the room when it happens again and again. That happened to us last year. So, yes I agree with the above. We need to get something going down low because we have lost our outside game for the most part to graduation. Maybe Les has some new perimeter help coming. We definitely need it. But get stronger down low now!

In the zoom call I ‘attended’, I thought I heard Les say something about the NLI period which kicked off last Wednesday was extended to August. Not sure what that meant. Maybe just that signing will be coming more slowly this year. I don’t follow it outside of Davis, so I’m not sure if there has been a dearth of announcements.

The added size down low should hopefully go a long way to helping us on the boards as well, that seemed to be another achilles heel of the team last year especially against some of the bigger, stronger teams. I guess I'm kind of old school compared to where the game is at today in that I just love the ability to have a dependable big guy down low that you can get to ball to in crunch time and count on to go up strong to the basket and convert or drawn contact and get to the line. Today it's obviously much more en vouge to rely on 3's, but I think there's still a lot of value in having an inside game.

We’ve been at our best when we had a solid post player (Adenrele, Goode) who were very good team defenders, solid rebounders, could pass and score when fed on the pick and roll. The way we defend, with the hard double team up high and rolling back into the key, really puts a premium on a big with good footwork. Hope we found a couple

Two new commits:

Christian Anigwe 6'9 190 PF transferring from San Jose State. He started 30 games last year and averaged 23.2 minutes per game. He shot 43% from the field, 5.2 ppg, 5.3 rpg and had 34 blocks on the season. It appears that he will have two years of eligibility left and may or may not have to sit out a year depending upon what the NCAA is doing with the new transfer rules.






Ran-Andre Pehka 6'3 PG from Estonia. He averaged 8.4 ppg and 2.6 assists per game in the FIBA European Under 18 Championships last year.

I like the additional height and athleticism , with D 1 experience. Still a little worried about perimeter scoring but excited about the talent coming in

Agree...we lost a lot of firepower from the perimeter including the best 3 point shooter in the nation. I wonder who will step up as our deep threats?

I stopped over at the SJst message board to get a feel for Anigwe. Some seemed to like his hustle and thought he might be ready to take a step up. But most thought his offense was stagnant (not much of a jump shot but likes to take 3's) and though he does block some shots, his timing wasn't always the best. He did start all but one game last year, so he clearly was being relied upon, and for the Ags, he just needs to set good screens, play solid defense and rebound. Certainly for the Ags, with him, Hogland, Koehler and Murphy (assuming McGill and Borra sit out a year) we have a lot more depth in the middle than we've had in a while. That will allow Fuller to shift back to a wing position (playing the 3 rather than the 4 he had to man last year). So between Fuller, Pepper, Manjon, Adebayo, and Squire, although it still feels like we are missing that dead eye bomber, I bet Fuller becomes one of the go to threats. Of course, we'll also see a big jump up in production with Pepper and Manjon going into their second season. With both CSUN and UH losing a lot of players this off season, we should be right back up there in the BW next year.

I wonder when the program will announce Anigwe; Pehka was announced today

Anigwe announcement

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2020/5/6/mens-basketball-christian-anigwe-joins-uc-davis-as-a-junior-transfer.aspx

I was reading Jon Wilner’s article on PAC 12 basketball in the Mercury this morning. In there, he makes an aside about ‘if the NCAA allows undergraduate transfers to be immediately eligible next season, as expected....’. Not sure if that would be a one time thing, or where he is getting that information. But, if so, we’d have two experienced guys from the get-go ( the Portland transfer would have been eligible in January 2021)