The Aggies hit the road for two, tough Big West Conference games this week at Riverside and Irvine. First up are the Highlanders who are currently 1-1 in conference play after losing at Irvine 73-66 and then beating Santa Barbara at home 79-77. Guards, Isaiah Moses and Barrington Hargress, lead Riverside in scoring at 13.0 and 11.6 ppg respectively. In their win over UCSB, Hargress had 26 and Moses had 21.
Ags are blistering the twine at a 64.3% rate. Couldn't ask for a better offensive performance. On the Highlanders side, it can't get much worse at 21.9%. Given regression to the mean, this margin won't hold, so the game is not in the bag, but I like the way the Ags playing defense. As long as they can keep hitting their shots at a moderate rate, I like their chances.
Riverside has some very quick guards that make their press tough for us especially with TY out. He's our quickest guard and we need him when team's press us.
The Aggie smothering defense was on full display especially in the first half and the Ags ended up holding Riverside to just 27% shooting for the game. The Aggies primarily play man but they played quite a bit of zone tonight as well and it was very effective. On the offensive end, the Aggies shot 60% overall along with 42% from 3 and 75% from the line. Pepper had 31 and DeBruhl, starting in place of TY who was out, had 14.
Pure speculation on my part, but maybe TY is out due to some academic issues regarding his eligibility? Just saying that due to the timing after fall quarter grades.