I remember watching the 2010 on CSN Bay Area. Mark Payne was out and Hardin was coming back from injury. Caligari and Juliian Welch led the Ags. That was a pretty good team talented wise

Boy, what a tough day losing a game with a tie score (80- 80) :D

But I kid. I make funny typos too.

So many transfers for Ugly Old Potatoes. Are they turning into Cal State Bakersfield North ?

Stanford lost last night at home to Eastern Washington 67-61, which makes the UOP come against the Cardinal seem a little less impressive. And UOP is not very big, with only two guys listed over 6'6". It'll be an interesting contest.

Go Ags!

Hahaha...80-80...toughest loss ever!

We haven't seen much from our new big guys so far this season though. I'm hoping that we get some production from Russell, John, Underwood or Strom. Somebody will have to set up if Chima gets in foul trouble and when he needs a blow.

I watched part of Riverside's win over Cal and they looked impressive. The Big West is off to a nice start so far this season. League is shaping up to be a real dog fight.

You're right about our bigs. I wonder if Les takes this opportunity to try and get a couple of them some quality minutes, or does he go small and hope that our "non-big" guys are better than their "non-big" guys. I was a little surprised that Russell didn't see any playing time on Monday, based solely on how early he came in against Bethesda. Maybe it was a matchup deal. We'll know more over the next few games.

Big West is off to a good start. Even Poly, who was picked to finish near/at the bottom, pushed Cal. Of course, maybe that's more a statement about how bad Cal is, but still, Pac-12 talent is Pac-12 talent.

Did any of our new bigs look very promising from what you saw in the Bethesda game? It looks like Jackson may work himself into some PT this year. Do you think Strom will be redshirted?

Here's how the Big West has done so far this season:

Big West overall: 11-5
and 8-5 vs D1 competition

vs. Big Sky: 2-0
vs. MWC: 0-1
vs. Pacific-12: 1-3
vs. SWAC: 1-0
vs. Summit: 2-1
vs. Sun Belt: 1-0
vs. WCC: 1-0

home: 7-0 (3-0 vs. D1)
away: 4-5

Never mind. I figured it out.

None of our backup bigs were impressive against Bethesda...but Russell looked like he could rebound, set picks and move a bit on defense. Granted, that's a very small sample size, but I suspect he get's more time. I really liked what I saw from Strom, smooth is the best word to describe him, but I'm just guessing that with a decent number of bigs this year, he might RS. Les seems to like a four big man rotation, and with Chima/Goode/John penciled in, that only leaves one spot left, so the freshman may have to sit for a year. I do think he has a future, though.

PA, thanks for posting that video. What a great day that was! Plus, I get to see my son and his friend jumping around, trying not to get squashed.

Vegas has the Ags as 4 point underdogs. I've always liked being an underdog in rivalry games.

Go Ags!

Heads up Aggie fans: The tipoff at the Spanos Center is scheduled for 7:30 pm not 7:00 pm.

Where does it say 7 pm? (I actually thought it started at 6. :)

i had it wrong in the thread title and corrected it.

Ugly first 4 minutes for the Aggies. No offensive flow and TO's. Lucky to be down only 2-0.

Despite the ugly start, the Aggies are heating up down the stretch of the first half. Aggies up 34-25.

Halftime. Aggies up 34-27.

That was an odd half of basketball. The Ags committed 10 TO's and didn't ever seem to get into an offensive flow yet two 3's by Chima and one by John briefly gave the Ags a 9 point lead before Pacific got a bucket at the buzzer.

Chima has 15 and Siler has 9. We really need some offensive production from some of the rest of the team.

Aggies win!

Step 1: Win. Check. Step 2: Start a winning streak against Pacific. In progress.

I'll take it, but we had a complete meltdown towards the end of the game. No help on defense, poor ball movement, turnovers. This team definitely has it's work cut out. But no doubt good pieces, gritty defense and a star player. Shorts, Siler, Chima, AJ John, Goode. Not a bad core. Will be interesting to see how the team develops. So far two road wins coming off a tournament season.

Not the prettiest ending, but you've got to love road wins. Hopefully they continue to learn how to win down the stretch.

Take that, You owe plenty !

Basketball can be a beautiful game and this was not one of them. The Ags had 20 TO's and Pacific had 16 and Pacific had 14 steals while the Ags had 7. Both teams capitalized on the sloppy ball handling; UOP scored 23 points off TO's and the Ags scored 20. There were stretches in which it was hard to tell which team could play worse on offense.

Les builds his teams around defense but you can't win on just defense alone and right now the Aggie offense is a constant struggle. I love the way this team works on defense but Heaven help us on offense if Chima gets in early foul trouble and has to sit. Siler is a great shooter but our offensive sets are not creating many open looks for him. We don't seem to have anyone who can confidently create an open perimeter shot off the dribble one on one and, for whatever reason, we are not penetrating and kicking the ball out for an open perimeter look very often either.

We shot a decent 51% but only put up 41 shots because we turned the ball over so often. Pacific also helped us out by shooting a dreadful 14 of 24 from the line and some of those were the front ends of one and ones. The Tigers manhandled us on the offensive boards 14-4 which led to them getting 32 points in the paint. These kind of stats tell me that we were very fortunate to win.

Yes, I'll take the win for sure but this game showed me that this team has got some serious work to do.

i was following via ESPN and saw us get up by 17 with about 10 to go, and stopped paying attention. next thing i knew it was 4 with a couple minutes to go. looking at the stats i had assumed it was a combo of turnovers and our 3-point shooting cooling down (i think we were 5-6 in the first half). a win is a win, especially over Pacific and especially on the road. the thing that really stood out from the stats was the lack of scoring beyond Chima. Silar had 9 in the 1st half, only 4 in the 2nd. Goode didn't attempt a shot? also, looks like our rotation is about 8 guys...that's playing it pretty thin. we'll need to figure out how to get the others more integrated in the offense.

next up : Utah Valley. always tough. they started with losses to Kentucky and Duke (!), beat Idaho State soundly on the road. that's gonna be a challange.

One of the big things this team will have to learn how to do is close out games. If you watched enough games down the stretch last year, and especially the championship win over UCI, when the game came down to crunch time, we gave the ball to Lamar, set a high pick for him and he'd either drive to the bucket or lay it off. That's how we would use the clock and still end up with a productive offensive trip. Last night, we were in that same situation, use the clock but still get some points, and we really didn't have a good consistent play to run. But that's what these out of conference games are for, to learn how to win. It'd be good if we get put in enough of these types of situations so we can figure out what works and what doesn't, and guys get used to their roles.

And the lack of bench depth is a little worrisome. It'd be nice to get another big guy in the rotation, and some more time for Jackson.

Go Ags!

The curious thing about this game is that you would think that the Ags were playing well when they got up by 17 at the midway point of the second half. But, it was more because Pacific was ice cold and they were turning the ball over about as much as the Ags were. Aggie passes were sailing into the stands, guys were dribbling off their feet and dribbling into double and triple teams and getting tied up. It was ugly for both teams.

We have to have more offensive balance or we will not have a good season. Chima and Siler can not carry this team offensively all season long. Mooney has shown that he can shoot but our offensive schemes are not creating many open looks from the perimeter and it doesn't appear that we have shooters who can confidently create open looks off the dribble by themselves. So our offense is going to have to create openings for the shooters off high screens and kicking the ball out off dribble penetration. TJ Shorts had a nice game at UNC and I think we'll continue to see him get better as the season progresses.

As you said, we seem to be very thin when comes to help from the bench. It appears that AJ John is going to be the first big off the bench so I hope he'll continue to improve with playing time and Mooney is capable of being a big scorer when he's feeling it. After that though, the few other bench players we've seen have not looked comfortable at all on the floor. It's early but that's a big area of concern right now.

Everyone knows that Les preaches defense first and foremost and I think he recruits for players that he feels have a very high work ethic on defense. We haven't seen him bring in much elite offensive firepower outside of the Hawkins' era group with the exceptions being Chima, Siler and Brynton Lemar for the most part. He produced a winner with last year with that philosophy so what do I know!