Bakersfield, in contrast to CSUN, has played a fairly strong schedule, which partly explains their losing record. They played tough road games against Cal, Ole Miss, Florida State, UCSB and CSUN accounting for nearly half their losses. The rest of the explaining is due to the loss of veteran head Coach Rod Barnes, who has retired and the team is in the hands of interim coach, Mike Scott. Barnes is a tough act to follow having won 210 games at CSUB and 396 in his career. Scott, will have help, though, from Assistant Coach Brandon Barnes, son of Rod. It’s hard to say how well they will do this Saturday, but the Aggies are favored.

To date in the Big West, Cal State Bakersfield is 0-3 but all losses have come against the better schools: CSUN, UCSB and UCI. They also struggle on the road as they have a 1-6 record, their only road win was against Fresno State, which is currently 6-6. At home they are much better but their only significant victory was a 64-63 squeaker over Idaho. On the other hand, they came close to beating UCI at Icardo Center, 77-81.

The Roadrunners return only two regulars, one of whom is the starting point guard and leading scorer, Dailin Smith (15.4 ppg). The other is Tom Mark, a 6’7” forward who has started a few games so far but often is displaced by 6/ 11” center Pierre Geneste, Jr. who along with forward Ronald Jessamy leads the team in rebounds. Geneste’s 6.2 rebounds per game is impressive in that he only plays about 18 minutes per game. Jessamy is also impressive with his 37 blocked shots this season (UCD’s Niko Rocak has 21) and he scored 25 points against the Anteaters on Thursday. Rounding out the most common starting five are transfer guards C. J. Hardy and A. J. George. Hardy scores an average of 14.6 ppg. Guard Jaden Alexander, an occasional starter and a junior who has spent all of his years at Bakersfield, and freshman Mike Price log a lot of floor minutes as well. As a team, CSUB struggles from trey territory hitting only 28%. They are also not good at keeping opponents off the board, allowing 37.9 rpg.(note that UCD averages 31.3 rpg. allowed). An even more important advantage for the Aggies is that the Roadrunners only make 10.6 assists per game while Davis averages 16. Given Bakersfield’s 1-6 road record vs. UCD’s 7-1 home record this should be a second Big West win for the Aggies.