UC Davis might be the best team they’ve faced this season. — Toke69

Not so sure about that.

The Aggies are still very much trying to gel as a team and figure out how to play together more cohesively. The Ags battled well against Washington but the Huskies did not impress me all that much and I think they're going to take a beating in the Big 10. They just lost to Nevada by 10. The Idaho win was a gritty effort by the Aggies to hang in there and comeback after trailing most of the game but I wasn't all that impressed with Idaho either and they just got trounced by Washington State 90-67.

Our defense was MIA against Menlo and we've yet to show that we can shoot from the perimeter. We are definitely in a rebuilding process with the loss of Pepper, Milling and Adebayo and we're missing the 3 point shooting of Pepper and Milling and the defense of Adebayo. Les brought in 4 transfers but we've yet to see much production from them other than Daugherty who looks promising. Teams will be focusing on shutting down TY so some other players are going to have to step up and take some pressure off of him.

The score will get ugly fast if we don't defend any better against Stanford than we did against Menlo.

Not saying that we're that great, just that Stanford hasn't played anyone much better as far as I can tell. None of the teams they've beaten has won a single game against division 1 opposition. I agree with you on all points, although Tamba has stepped up his offense albeit not from the perimeter, plus their free throw shooting has been good. I'm pretty sure Coach Les will have the defense clicking but probably not soon enough to give Stanford a problem.

I realize that I had quoted the wrong sentence from your original post so I edited it:

UC Davis might be the best team they’ve faced this season — Toke69

Stanford has beaten Denver, Fullerton and NAU handily and I'm not so sure we are better than those 3 teams at least not at this point from what I've seen from us so far. We're a work in progress and the progress has been slow.

The Stanford big man is killing us, 10 points in the first 7 minutes, as many as UCD has.

Chappel is keeping us in the game. Yeah the freshman has two nice threes. Going to be nice to watch him progress

Cardinal have an 11 point lead and are 11/13 from the foul line. Ags too slow on defense and forcing shots on offense. They'd better figure something out or it's going to be a blow-out.

41-23 Stanford at the half.

Rough half of basketball for the Aggies: only shooting 31% overall, 3-10 from 3, 4-9 from the line and out rebounded 28-13. I wouldn't want to be in the locker room with Les right now...

TY not having a good game. Rocak has been playing well: 6 rebounds and solid defense on the Stanford Bigs. The team seems to have more energy in the second half.

TY found his mojo. Ags defending well. Down only 50-46 with 10:17 left!

Ags fall 79-65.

The Aggies played much better in the second half after a poor first half and managed to cut the lead to 6 with 7:36 to go. TY ended up with 26 after struggling in the first half but the Aggies had no answer to Stanford's 7'1 post, Maxim Raynaud, who had 33 points and 14 rebounds.

When you play against a 7'1" forward who can make 5 3-pointers as well as pull down 14 boards, there's not much a defense can do. This game dimly echoed yesterday's football loss in that both Aggie teams might have won with better first half play.

WHAT HEAD COACH JIM LES HAD TO SAY

"We are playing some really good teams, so we are challenging our guys, and we want to keep that in perspective. But we want to get to where we are playing Aggie Basketball consistently, and that first half was anything but Aggie Basketball ... You can't play good teams on the road without having that disciplined mindset.

"We talked about it at the half, and I thought we responded and played Aggie Basketball in the second half. We were solid, disciplined defensively; we forced some tough shots ... we also just executed better offensively. We'd like to have some of those rim attacks back that were point blank, but that happens, and I thought we just had a better mindset in the second half."

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2024/11/17/mens-basketball-comeback-against-stanford-falls-just-short.aspx