The Aggies travel to Cheney, WA to play Big Sky football rival Eastern Washington. The contest will be shown on ESPN+. The Golden Eagles have played a much tougher schedule than UC Davis, so do not be fooled by their record. They are a big team with 6 players at 6' 7" or taller, including 6' 10" starting forward Ethan Price. On the other hand, the combined record of the teams they have beaten is 7-36 (if my calculator is working properly). Their most recent loss was a close 77-70 setback at Texas Tech, so they might be rounding into form. This will be far from the toughest opponent the Ags will face before Big West play, since they go to UCLA on Dec. 21.
The Aggie schedule a tough one in the next couple of weeks for sure. EWU, UCLA and Hawaii on the road before coming home to play Irvine who just may be the best team in the Big West.
This game will be a tough road test for the Aggies against a pretty good basketball team. The Ags lead the all-time series 2-1 having won last year in Davis 84-76. Anigwe had an outstanding game in that win over the Eagles. He had a double-double with 19 points and 12 rebounds.
Eli Pepper is approaching another UCD milestone in scoring also. He currently sits in 21st place in all-time scoring for the Aggies with 1081 points which is just 25 points behind #20 Dominic Calegari who scored 1106 points during his basketball career with the Ags.
EWU is 4-7 with a win over hapless Cal; not sure they have a good win. They’ve played a challenging schedule. That’s a tough trip. Hopefully FT shooting continues to be good since we get to the line ALOT.
Semi homecoming for Pepper snd DeBruhl. Like to see Leo have a solid game - his confidence seems a bit shaky right now. Like to see his hard effort rewarded
The end of the half was pretty strange.Lots of odd calls by the refs. Ags not hitting from the 3 line so far: 18%. If they were stroking at their usual rate, they might be ahead by double figures. I think the Eagles made an early mistake trying to get the ball to their big man, Price. The Aggies did a great job of collapsing on him and forcing turnovers or missed shots. I notice they gave up on that at about the mid-point of the half. Nice that we have the lead. Even nicer that they're shooting 90% from the free throw line. I suspect they worked on the mental angle over the finals break.
37-35 Ags at the half. We had several opportunities to stretch the lead to double digits at times but poor 3 point shooting and lapses on defense allowed the Eagles keep it close. The offense has not found a good rhythm.
This was easily the worst I've seen the team play this year. They lost their composure when they lost their lead. I'm going to guess that they will come home in January against UCI hoping to avoid a 4th straight loss. Hope I'm wrong.
I think this may be the poorest performance overall by the Aggies this year. You simply can not allow a team to shoot 10-18 from 3 while we go 3-20. Way too many break downs on defense also. Les will not be happy at all with this effort.
Unfortunately, I don't think you are wrong, Toke. We just haven't found any kind of consistency game to game or even half to half this year. We don't seem to be able to stretch a lead and keep it throughout the whole 40 minutes. We even lost a 29 point lead to Boston University in the final 16 minutes of the second half before winning in OT.
I feel like this team has the makings of a pretty good basketball team but something is missing or just hasn't gelled yet. I can't put my finger on it but something is not clicking. If the coaches don't get it figured out, I think we'll be hard pressed to be in the top half of the Big West.
We can't have a game like this against UCLA, Hawaii and Irvine and expect to have a chance to win. The Bruins will run us out of Pauley Pavilian and Hawaii is always hard to beat in Hawaii. We follow those two games up with our conference opener at home against Irvine who is perhaps the best team in the BW.
We've had 11 games now figure things out but we're still very inconsistent and that doesn't bode well for us in these next 3 very tough games.
I'll be pulling for us but I'm not real confident at the moment...
The Ags came into this game as one of the top 5 rebounding teams in the nation but EWU beat us on the boards today. The last time that happened was in our 10 point loss to LMU.
Less TOs would help. Slowing down and ball control may help too. Fun to watch fast plays but if you get a ball passed to you under the net don’t miss the shot, and if you’re under the basket be prepared to get a pass. Players having more aware of where everyone is plus where the ball is might also help. I like seeing Pepper, DeBruhl, and Beasley on the floor. Hope they have a better showing Wednesday.
I wondered over the hyperbole of the EWU broadcasters calling us the best team in the Big West or one of the best teams in California. I guess that's how they pump up the Eagles to make the W a lot bigger than it really is.