Oddsmakers have us as 3 1/2 favorites. Gotta win these home games - we have some tough road trips ahead.

Long Beach State is led by dynamic scorer Marcus Tsohonis as well as the trio of Aboubacar Traore, Jadon Jones, and Lassina Traore. Recognized for their wins in the non-conference against USC and Michigan, the Beach use their physicality to initiate contact for free-throws and to try and win the rebound battle every night. The Beach rank 14th in the nation in free throw attempts per game while both Traore's lead the conference in rebounds per game. Long Beach State enters the contest with a record of 15-9. The all-time series between the two programs sits at 13-25 with the Beach holding the advantage.

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2024/2/14/mens-basketball-aggies-set-for-vital-two-game-homestand-host-long-beach-state-and-uc-riverside.aspx

Seeing Scott Marsh reminds me that I was surprised to see him flash me a thumbs up sign in Hawai`i when he saw me wearing my UCD hoodie. I guess he does the radio broadcast?

46-30 Long Beach at the half. Impressive performance by The Beach. They’re long, quick and extremely athletic. We’re in a heap of trouble…

It's worse than that. Ags only have 30, shooting 32.4% and doing a poor job keeping the Beach off their offensive boards. LBSU has pulled down 12 offensive rebounds.

They’re also very physical. I was watching from the Woodstock line and the physicality was much more easier to see from court level as compared to the stands

I wonder what switch coach Les flipped to get the Ags to settle down in the second half? Whatever it was, it worked pretty well. Of course, Pepper's great shooting helps. Now they have to hold on and put a W on the board.

The Aggies made a valiant effort to come back from 19 down in the second half to take the lead by 4 with 5 minutes to go but, ultimately, fell short when they could only score 2 points after that until the end of the game. The game was lost in the first half though as we seemed to have a hard time adjusting to their length, quickness and athleticism and were down 17 at the half.

Pepper passed Greg Grant to become the second leading scorer in Big West history behind Lucious Harris.

Not sure what happened at the end there, but it was a very disappointing loss, as it always is when you rally from behind to pull in front then can't put the game away. The Ags missed so many lay-ups!

Yes, we missed a bunch of bunnies and FT's also. Aboubacar Traore only shoots 59% from the line but he hit 4 critical FT's in the final minute too.

The beach went to box and one on Pepper after his last 3 which really disrupted our offensive flow. I believe we had 3 turnovers down the stretch and no ‘easy’ buckets. They had 2 or 3 guys who can credit a shot and had no hesitation taking the big shot.

I’ve never seen Pepper that riled up. He blasted a guy on a break away layup during their surge. Snapping at Les, and was yelling at Rocek before his free throws. I think he wanted Nicko to throw the ball out to the perimeter down 3 instead of taking the very contested put back. They need to regroup - home stretch is very tough! We’ll need to be at our best or look at something like a 12-8 record

We had our chances but the Beach had a hot set of hands. I think the second half stats were close, but our poor shooting in the first and their hot hands killed us. Rocek continues to impress. On to Riverside. No give aways coming our way.

Seven out of the last eight games between the Aggies and The Beach have been decided by 5 points or less and last night was another really good, tough game.

When LB gets it going, like they did in the first half, you can see how beating Michigan on the road was no fluke for them. They have so much length and athleticism and they use it well around the basket. Like Dr Mike mentioned, they have players who can create their own shots and they were draining them even when they were tightly contested.

They were killing us on the offensive boards in the first half also although we did much better in the second half. There were a lot of times when we had a several players in good position for the rebound and they would simply out leap us and snag the rebound with their length and bounce.

We had quite a few blown layups throughout the game and each miss added up against us in the final tally. Missing the easy ones is going to happen at times. You just can't have 4 or 5 of them against a good team like LB.

Teams are trying all kinds of defensive strategies to try and slow down Pepper. He's seeing a lot of double and even triple teams and they're playing him very physical. He's getting bumped and pushed around a lot away from the ball. The box and one shut him down in the last 5 minutes of the game and I think we'll see that defensive strategy used again against him again by some teams in our upcoming games.

Rocak continues to get better and better. He's the most improved player on the team in my opinion. He's made great progress in scoring underneath the basket with good ball fakes rather than rushing the shot and getting it blocked. I hope he'll continue to work on that mid-range jumper teams are giving him. They'll have to come out and defend him if he starts knocking a few of those down.

There are no gimmes in our schedule ahead and 4 of the next 6 games are on the road. Hanging on to the #2 seed is going to be very tough.

Snapping at Les, and was yelling at Rocek before his free throws. I think he wanted Nicko to throw the ball out to the perimeter down 3 instead of taking the very contested put back. — DrMike

Yeah I saw that too. TY had to get Pepper out of Nico's face. Pepper was probably right in wanting the kickout, but right before critical FTs was not the time to start yelling at your teammate. Nico then missed two, though we got lucky on the rebound. It's just the heat of the big game, but it certainly showed just how important this one was to the team.

That was some second half buy the Ags. I wasn't able to be at the game but watched it on ESPN. Good commentary. We started playing our game and Pepper hit some critical 3 pointers. Too bad the rest of the team was a bit off from beyond the arc. All those missed free-throws really hurt.

I can't fault Pepper so much - he's human like the rest and really wanted to see us come back. I'm hoping it all is dealt with in the locker room after the game. Les can do some coaching there and get the team focused for Saturday.

I was listening to the post-game driving home from the game, and Les mentioned some talk in the locker room and how they needed to move on from that.

My wife and I were listening to the post-game on the radio on the drive home as well and Les said he didn't have a whole lot to say to the team in the locker room after the game. He said that the team was doing most of the talking with each other. He also mentioned that this is the second game in a row where we have not come out with the energy and aggressiveness we need at the start of the game and you know that will not sit well with Les.

I'm sure the team is frustrated right now and it's showing. We got blown out by San Diego in front of the biggest crowd of the season, got scorched in Hawai'i in front of a boisterous crowd and then couldn't finish the comeback in this game after taking the lead by 4 with 5 minutes to go. The Riverside game will be a gut check for us. We have a tough schedule ahead and we need to turn the frustration into energy and determination going forward.

It must be frustrating for Pepper to carry the scoring load while Johnson, Milling and Adebayo go 7 for 34 from the floor and the bench only added 6 points. Except for Eli, Rocak and--surprisingly--Borra the whole team played poorly. I wonder if the first half was a bit of a "hangover" from their loss to Hawai`i.

Just a bitching aside - these TV reviews are really effecting the games. It seemed like in the fairly recent past, games clocked in at just under 2 hours. This was was over at closer to 8:20. I get it was a tight game with both teams using up their time outs BUT the reviews just seem to add some like 10 minutes to each game. Thankfully we didn’t have our normal assortment of clock mishaps!

When you’re facing a 80 minute ride home that gets closed considerably by the perpetual I80 construction starting at 8:00, that extra time can be a real drag