And now she's skewering them

Up by 18 with a bit over 4 minutes left in the 3rd

Last few minutes of commentary have basically been variations of the commentators acknowledging that LBSU is good, but Gross's program is just a different level

Um...

56-33 Aggies after three.

Hall finally missed one, "only" going 9/10 tonight

Commentator: "Oh wow she's human"

Backups getting a bunch of minutes. Pretty messy but good experience

67-50, Aggies win!

Very cool that Davis had the deep end of the bench in for most of the final quarter.

Nine players with double digit minutes.

Long Beach might eventually be a problem, but probably not this year.

I'm... honestly not sure the Ags need to win the tournament anymore provided the loss is to LBSU. Objectively speaking, if a mid-major finishes the season with 2 losses, one of which is to a top team and the other is to the next-best conference team, one would think that's prime at-large bid material

Also, rank Davis.

It is so much fun to watch such a well coached team execute the way the Aggies do. The only bummer in this game is that Hall's consecutive made FT streak ended at 34 straight but I think she'll be happy with 34 of 35...

Going into today Davis was 74th in NET rankings and LBSU was 108. Nobody else in the Big West is close and after tonight the gap might be enormous.

Even if multiple BWC bids is a pipe dream, for the sake of seeding we're all LBSU, USF, and Oregon fans now. They're our only prayer of quality wins and losses, and after tonight's hit to the Beach's NET ranking USF is probably going to be UCD's best win of the season, which isn't saying all that much.

That school record might stand for decades due to how favorable the conditions were for this specific thing (no hostile crowds, 2 months to to work on the shot mid-season)

I tend to disagree on Z’s point. I think that pressure on the minds of quality athletes which Cierra is may be a plus in making FTs, but who am I to know. Only had FTs in IM games at Hickey. No pressure and I missed all the time. Whatever, Cierra is great..

Yeah I'm just spitballing, not like I've ever shot a real FT under pressure outside of IMs

i tend to agree it’s easier with no hostile crowds, but pressure is pressure. Look at today’s men’s game. Pepper is on fire but misses the front end of a one-and-one that would have iced it. Maybe it’s easier to overthink with no fans.

Jen Gross has put together a machine. It's pretty impressive.

61-9 in conference the last five years (and four of those losses were in 2019-20) and 102-35 overall. Four straight regular season titles. Only blemish is the two BW tourney losses.

The biggest thing is replacing players who have graduated. We're now on year 5 of controlling the conference so this isn't a "we had one or two great recruiting classes" situation.

Would be nice for competitive reasons if they could have gotten Irvine to cancel their Fullerton series this weekend and have them come up here and play Davis as was originally scheduled. Or have us go down there and play them. Record-wise, UCD, LBST and UCI are the top three teams in the conference. LBST and UCI still play, we just played LBST. Would make sense to have us play UCI also for a true round robin. At least give UCI a shot. They get nothing by playing a horrible Fullerton team and we've got an open date. I would think that UCI would prefer the chance to knock us off themselves rather than hope we lose twice to .500 teams.

:strong:

That’s great for coach Gross and the entire staff. Amazing job they have done (and continue to do).

Yeah that's a good point. And these athletes are expected to do their thing in a ton of different arenas and environments, so it makes sense the pressure and their coping might not vary that much based on location and crowd size, compared to game factors

Yep, an unfortunate asterisk on this season if no regular-season match between UCI and UCD. Among many other asterisks.

That being said, if Irvine wants a chance to knock the Ags off, they can still earn their way to doing that in the BWCT, where it will matter more. As a likely 2/3 seed they'll have every opportunity to do so. First test will be if they can beat LBSU in their rescheduled weekend later.

NCAA's own selection rankings aren't very impressed with the conference outside the Ags though. As of this morning, UCD's NET ranking is at a (relatively) stratospheric 64, which would be lower/mid-table in the power conferences. LBSU has fallen to 124, and UCI is next at 177. The gaps get a lot smaller after that.

Another POTW award for Hall. :strong:

Very deserving! Her shooting has really improved and you've got to love her toughness and competitiveness. She's a pleasure to watch.

I'll be interested to see if anyone is willing/able to pick up a game with the Aggie women this coming weekend. We really need the games but who would want to kick us into the schedule?

Santa Clara has a game on Saturday but nothing else this week, so maybe that would work. Cal, Stanford, St Marys, USF, and uop all have two games already scheduled.

Also I saw Campbell Gray on the sideline last week in full knee brace and crutches. I haven’t seen any official announcement but I’m sure it’s at least an ACL. We’ll get a lot more Carrion at the backup point.

Just watched Oregon lose a 63-61 heartbreaker to Stanford. Had every chance to win it, but then the Oregon PG slipped and got called for a travel with 2 seconds left.

After years of tempering expectations and "settling" with winning the BWC and WNIT early rounds, it's just so encouraging to see that Oregon game on our record making us look like we belong among the top. An OoC game would be great now but like abridge said there's gotta be some hesitation now for teams to schedule UCD

This only matters if any of our games get cancelled or we lose, but Poly helped us out this weekend by beating Long Beach twice, so they’re now 10-4.

Obviously if we play 4 and win 4 we’ll win the conference. But 3-1 we’d just need Long Beach to beat Irvine once. They play the last weekend of the year so we’ll have a better idea after next weekend.

Really good for the 4-peat, bad for NCAAT seeding unfortunately. I'm holding that if Long Beach won out (now academic) we could potentially have grabbed a bid and decent seed even with a loss to LBSU in the final. Now it's business as usual and the Ags' season comes down to outplaying everyone in a single week in March

Edit: 5-peat, my mistake. I'm losing count.

So am I getting it right that the women's tournament no longer has the regional games? When they played Stanford in the first round a couple years ago, it seemed like seeding wouldn't have made any difference.