EWU beat Washington St. Utah St is 5-1. Feels like a 4-0 start was in our reach. Hope the lid is off the basket today and we get some offensive confidence building for UOP.

Yes, I'd like to see some much better shooting from the perimeter and better offensive ball movement all around. I think 4-0 was a real possibility also. We played pretty good basketball against Utah State and EWU but started poorly against both Pepperdine and Sac. We're not the kind of offensive team that is going to come back from 12-15 point deficits very often.

By the way, our loses don't look so good: Pepperdine is now 2-6 for the season and Sac (3-3) just got drilled at Arizona 105-59.

We’re behind at the half?

Down 12. Totally out played on both ends of the floor. 12 TO’s already.

Behind 38-26 at the half.

Shows they finished on a 13-2 run. Wow

This doesn’t seem to be an anomaly…just awful basketball. Brace yourself for a very long season if this continues…

Tyler Les describes the Pavilions 50 fans as a "hostile environment".

It looks like Chancellor May is under the basket.

We are currently playing the worst basketball of any team in the BW Conference from what I’ve seen so far this season.

Now down 20 with 10:53 to go 60-40.

This could be a program low point

UC Merced Bobcats must be licking their chops.

So we are 0-2 all-time against an art school?

In defense of Coach Stewart, I'm told the first game was an exhibition, and his goal wasn't to win. This is worse.

Hope so?

Any chance we can get Bob Williams to un-retire? :p

No idea when Coach Les contract ends.

It is worse, in part because the Urban Knights exhibited that they could best us once. Thanks though for the clarification. I thought that was a regular game. Good to know we are only 0-1 all time against the art school.

This was one of the footnotes to the Stanford football upset. We had out performed the Trees in a scrimmage the previous season. They had to know the Ags were capable of beating them. That was more fun than this.

His contract may end sooner than he expected.

I was at EWU game and they haven’t looked anywhere close to the team that played that day. What’s going on?

Honestly out hustled in every aspect of the game. Guys standing around on defense. Not trying to get rebounds. Throwing up shots that had no chance. Telegraphed passes. Second time I’ve posted this so far this season, just pathetic.

Maybe we need someone like that guy at Sacramento State.

Well, we should have stayed home and watched the 49ers. We left the game with 5 minutes to go and the game was out of reach.

No doubt that this is the low point of the Jim Les era at UC Davis. I think Les is a good coach of the game and he's respected and well connected among college basketball coaches. However, I don't think he's a particularly good recruiter. Remember, this is the team that he and his staff have assembled and put on the floor. I don't question the players will to win or play hard. I think it's more a question of not having the level of overall talent that's needed to be consistently successful at this level.

Jim expects his teams to win with hard effort and aggressiveness and I think they do play hard but you can't win on effort and aggressiveness alone. The game is also about quickness, length and pure basketball skills. Perennially, the best teams in the Big West like Irvine and Santa Barbara have several impact players like that on their teams each year as does Hawaii. We've had some players like that too but not very often: Corey Hawkins, Chima Moneke and TJ Shorts come to mind. These are players who can take over the game with their overall basketball abilities. Other teams in the Big West are getting impact players much more often than us and the best teams have some on their teams each year and that's about recruiting.

The following information is from:

COLLEGE BASKETBALL OCTOBER 24, 2019

College Basketball Coaching Salary and Buyout Database for 2019-20 Season. It has Jim Les ranked as the 78th highest paid coach in D1 basketball as of the date of the article. Russell Turner of Irvine is ranked as #74 at $449,000.

78. Jim Les – UC Davis

Total Compensation: $403,333

Additional Compensation: Negotiable stipend for supervising a camp; coach is permitted to allocate the proceeds from the camps

Notes: $350,000 in base salary, $53,333 in deferred compensation in the form of a retention bonus to be paid on October 1 if coach is still at school, school hasn’t committed a major NCAA infraction, program’s multi-year APR score is at least 943 and program generated at least $300,000 from guarantee games the previous season.

Max Bonus: $192,500

Buyout if Fired Without Cause: Roughly $1,078,000 (including 2019-20 compensation) – 100% of remaining $350,000 for this season, 80% of the next year’s $350,000, 60% of 2021-22’s $370,000, 40% of 2022-23’s $370,000, 20% of 2023-24’s $390,000

Buyout if Coach Terminates Contract: $150,000

Contract Term Ends: June 30, 2024

https://watchstadium.com/college-basketball-coaching-salary-and-buyout-database-for-2019-20-season-10-24-2019/

Dang, he makes a lot more than Hawk, I’m surprised.

And his wife makes more than he does: very successful granite bay real estate agent/broker. So maybe this is just his hobby now. Long drive though. Very hard. He needs a new gig.

To add a little perspective to this embarrassment here's what the Academy of Art has done so far this year:

Beat SF State 77-73
Beat Sonoma State 78-74 (OT)
Lost to Chico State 71-61
Lost to Stanislaus State 68-59
Beat St Martin's 90-78
Beat UCD 79-60

So by comparative scores we should be able to beat St Martin's in a close game... :chin:

We are getting absolutely destroyed on Twitter, and rightfully so. The butt of a lot of bad jokes. I know we aren’t in a position to fire a coach mid season, so Les better turn this team around quick.

Coach Stewart had a low salary and bare bones team budget.

ART U Urban Knights@ARTU_Knights

"MBB: @ARTUMBB dominates UC Davis in all aspects for 79-60 victory, the first #ARTU win over an NCAA DI opponent in program history! #UrbanKnights 50% FG & 61.5% 3PT; Byrd-Jelinek 14pts (6-11 FG), Sissoko 12pts (4-4 FG, 2-2 3PT), Williams 13pts (6-15 FG). #ArtSchool #PacWestMBB"

https://twitter.com/ARTU_Knights/status/1465110304509992962?s=20

Am I right - we played 2 Freshmen and 1 redshirt Frosh?

the designations have all been kind of screwed up with the extra year. So DeBruhl played a bit today and he is a true freshman (graduated high school last year). McGill started today and Bora played briefly. Both were on the team last year and played very limited minutes but are still considered freshman. Murphy redshirted two years ago, played limited minutes last year, so he is listed as a redshirt freshman.

I actually feel sorry for our kids. They were playing hard today and, honestly, AoA was just the better team on this occasion. When we did have some nice ball movement, we couldn't buy a shot. Les tried a lot of different combinations but nothing was working. I thought the Ags were pressing and it was making things worse. I'm sure Les has been reading them the riot act and now they're feeling the pressure. Tough time for the program.

Post-game coaching comments:

“This is an incredible moment for our program,” said third-year Urban Knights head coach Scott Waterman. “To be honest, you don’t go into these games expecting to come out on top. You come for the experience of playing against a very good basketball team and learning from it, but this is a testament to our kids and what we’re trying to do here. We worked very hard today.”

“I thought the last two days of practice were great, but we didn’t bring that onto the court today,” Les said.

“We have to solve that riddle. I’m a big believer in how you practice is how you will play in the game, but that isn’t happening and we have to use the games we have left before conference starts to change our approach and compete at the level we’re capable of.”

“We have to get back to playing Aggie basketball and that starts on the defensive end of the floor,” Les noted.

“We need to decide how and when we’re going to come out of this hole we’ve dug for ourselves. It’s not going to just magically happen. Three weeks ago, we left Utah State feeling pretty good about ourselves,” Les added in reference to UCD’s 72-69 season-opening win over the USU Aggies, the only loss Utah State has suffered this season.

“I told the kids we need to come back tomorrow with a sense of purpose, a sense of urgency and a sense of identity. I believe in this group and we as coaches will do everything we can to make them better. This is too good of a basketball team to not be playing at a higher level.”

https://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/basketball-uc-davis-cant-solve-riddle-in-non-conference-game/