The Aggies stay in southern California to face league leading UC Santa Barbara, probably their toughest league game this season. Although late in the season, this is the first meeting between the two teams. UCSB is coming off a very close win over The Beach. The Gauchos are led by longtime Aggie nemesis, Miles Norris (13.8 ppg) and Sophomore Ajay Mitchell (15.5 ppg). Scoring just below double figures for them are Josh Pierre-Louis (9.3 ppg) and Cal transfer Andre Kelly (9.1) who is also a monster rebounder as he and Norris combine to rip 12.8 rpg. UCSB is also tough on defense, trailing only Hawai`i in the Big West by allowing only 62.4 ppg. as well as leading the Big West in keeping opponents off the boards. Make no mistake, if UC Davis can pull this one out, it will be a major upset. We have lost 5 in a row to the Gauchos and under Coach Les 3-6 in away games.
As far as coaching styles go, Les should take a look at the legendary John Wooden’s method. Never yell at your players a and never ever disrespect them on the court in the public view. Frankly, I am not a big fan of Les. He is an ok coach I will give him that. He lives in granite bay with his wife who probably still makes $1m+ a year as a top real estate agent. He has no real connection to the davis community and this job is likely a hobby thing for him. Don’t renew again Rocko.
This game is not going well so far. ESPN+ is having technical difficulties so no live stream and the Ags are down 27-19 with 5:52 to go in the half. Too many TO's and defensive mistakes...Gauchos are shooting 61%...we will not win with poor defense.
SB killed us to start the second half by shooting 11 of 11 and eventually building a 20 point lead.
The brawl got pretty wild with 3 minutes to go. Kelly, who is 6'9 and 260, pushed TY to the floor with his right arm and them raised both of his hands up in the air with the "I didn't do anything gesture." TY fell hard into the legs of SB player. TY then got up in Kelly's face and when Kelly pushed him away, TY went at him and wrapped his arms around Kelly and we were off to the races. Kelly pancaked on top of TY on the sideline and at the feet of the fans in the chairs and a full on scrum broke out. No punches were thrown and, fortunately, no players on either team left the bench. The coaches and all 10 players on the court were pushing and pulling along with a couple of security guards. In the end, Kelly and TY were ejected and the game went on.
Edit: Apparently, only Kelly was assessed a flagrant technical 2 foul and ejected. At least that's what the box score shows. So I'm not sure if TY was ejected but he did leave the floor.
I was posting on the wrong discussion group. Getting senile. I saw most of the game that was not cut off by ESPN's technical difficulties. It's clear that the Gauchos are abetter team, but the Ags did themselves no favors by playing poor defense for a large stretch of the second half and did not have enough in the tank to come all the way back from being down by as much as 21. Mitchell and Pierre-Louis killed us after Wishart got off to a roaring start then cooled off. Andre Kelly was not much of a factor until he decided to pick on a much smaller guy. I was surprised at his lack of class, but I suspect Ty is the kind of guy who can get under your skin. The rematch in Davis could be interesting.
UCSB has a lot of offensive talent and size. They have a number of quick, long and talented players and they shot 61% tonight. They're the best team in the conference and we needed to play our A game from start to finish to have a fighting chance and that didn't happen. The game them in Davis should be a real dogfight though and I wouldn't be surprised if we win that one.
It's interesting. The Live Stats play-by-play shows Kelly with a flagrant 2 technical foul and ejection but not a technical foul on TY. However, he did leave the game and go to the locker room. The stats also shows that the Aggies were assessed a "Class B Administrative Technical Foul." Not sure what that is.
Long Beach 79 Bakersfield 69
Irvine 83 Riverside 64
CSUN 64 Poly 53
Fullerton 52 Hawaii 51 (Hawaii came back from 18 down in the second half and had 3 shots to win it in the final 6 seconds but none would drop)
So why did SB get a technical FT and we didn’t? The play by play homers were blaming TY for the brawl. Not sure what glasses they were looking through.
It looks like the official box score has been updated again. It shows that Kelly and Johnson were both given technical fouls and both left the game. The box score also shows a technical foul assessed to the Aggie bench but not what it was about. So maybe the technical fouls negated each other as far as FT's for either team and the FT's that SB took were for the bench technical called on the Aggies.
The announcers said that no players from either team left the bench and, if they would have, they would have automatically been ejected. So, since no other Aggies were given technicals or ejected, I have no idea what the Aggie bench technical was about.
The older guy who does the color for the SB play-by-play is hard to listen to after a while. His homer bias gets old quick. His comments when watching the replay of the scuffle between Kelly and TY were ridiculous. The replay clearly showed that the whole brouhaha started when Kelly knocked TY to the floor and then put his arms up in the air like he was innocent. The color guy's take on it was that "TY was the kind of player that can get under your skin" and that "he had been doing little things like hand checking and pushing throughout the game" as if to justify Kelly's obvious flagrant foul. He kept completely ignoring the fact that Kelly blatantly knocked TY to the floor to start it all every time the replay was shown again on ESPN+ while the refs were at the monitor trying to sort things out.
Yeah, the UCSB color guy and former coach was getting to me, too. He acted like he was in charge of the game, telling us what the teams should be doing instead of explaining or clarifying what he saw. Plus he was probably the most biased guy I've heard in all of the Ag's Big West away games.
I'm guessing that what Metzger-Jones is guilty of is something he said that we coudn't hear, but there's a good chance we'll never know.
the color guy is the worse I’ve ever heard. Friend of my son has worked with the these guys while he was a student at ucsb and said the analyst is a real jerk and he hates him. He had nothing but good things to say about the play by play announcer though. I muted most of the game