The second game of the Continental Tire Classic for the Aggies will be a tall order when they make the trek up to Reno to play the Wolfpack. Nevada is loaded with D1 transfers and former Kings and Warriors head coach, Eric Musclemen has his squad playing at a very high level. They have lost only two games this year both on the road: 84-80 to #14 and unbeaten TCU and an 82-76 OT loss to #24 Texas Tech.
The twins Caleb and Cody Martin, 6'7 F Jr transfers from North Carolina State, are averaging 18.2 and 15.2 ppg respectively. 6'7 Jr F Jordan Caroline, a transfer from Southern Illinois, is second in scoring at 18.1 ppg and 6'7 Sr G Kendall Stephens, a transfer from Purdue, adds 10.1 ppg. Nevada is averaging 83 points per game as a team to their opponents 69.5.
The Aggies are coming off a disappointing loss at San Francisco last Friday after a week off for finals. If they are going to have a chance to upset the Wolfpack they will need to play at least as well as they did in their win at Washington State.
Coach Musselman says he knows Davis well and watched the entire WSU game. He feels that Moneke is the best interior player they have faced all season. So we can expect that Nevada will be making things very tough on Chima and he is going to need to get a lot of help from his teammates if the Ags are to stay within striking distance.
The Ags are allowing their opponents to get the offensive rebound on their missed shots 32% of the time which is one of the worst percentages in the country. The Aggies will not have a chance if they can not do a better job on the defensive boards and let Nevada get 2nd and 3rd chance points.
It will be interesting to see how TJ Shorts is able to match up with the much taller guards of the Wolfpack. Will his speed and quickness work to his advantage when he gives up 7-10 inches? Will he be able to defend their size effectively? He was brilliant at WSU and we'll need to see more of that tomorrow in Reno.
Of note: Former Aggie player and assistant coach, Gus Argenal, is in his first year as an assistant with Nevada after 4 years as the head coach at CSU Monterey Bay. He is married to former Aggie women's basketball player, Hannah Turner.
This game will be a huge challenge for the Ags but it is also a great opportunity play well against an elite opponent.
We'll need to play an exceptionally good game to hang in there with the Wolfpack. They have a lot of experienced D1 transfers from high profile programs. Our opponents have seen a lot of film on us by now and they are keying on making things very difficult for Chima an Siler. We need some other players to begin to really step up. I hope we play well and give ourselves a chance.
Ags played well for 15 minutes and then awful for 5 minutes and UNR goes on a 17-2 run and lead 42-27 at the half. Turnovers and the inability to score outside of the paint is killing us and will continue to do so until we find some perimeter shooting.
Back to back terrible game. The team needs to make adjustments or this will become a rout by the Wolfpack
Chima needs to work on his shooting as he becomes more predictable to defend
The lack of length and perimeter shooting hurt this team chance in big game like this one ( WSU has been struggled and complacency did help us at Pullman)
Sorry I missed the first half of the 1st half.
If he is the only offense generator we had, it worries me ( esp we only had 3 assists in the first half.
I don't think Les has been happy with Chima tonight. It also seems that Les feels like the game was pretty much over early in the second half and, combined with being disappointed with some of his players, he is letting his bench play. Musselman looks like he'd like to run up the score.
1. Not sure if I agree why Moneke was on the bench so long. One long shot reason is probably Les does not want to risk Moneke getting hurt in the final minutes like in the Dons again. My hunch is that Les was disappointed in him for some reason.
2. Do you think Delveion Jackson will start at the end of the season? That was what I thought was projected before preseason started.
3. Despite the blowout loss, I did enjoy watching the bench play in the final minutes. I also was impressed that several bench players can shoot the three.
4. Watching this Facebook feed makes me mad at how crappy UCD's video feed is. Why can't UCD get their act together? There are always technical difficulties. It's as if they never bother to do a pregame check beforehand. I'm quite sure I'll be complaining about this constantly throughout the season.
Ags fall 88-73. Les pulled Chima early and, even though it was reported that Les was just giving his bench some experience, I don't buy it. Les is far too competitive to sit his leading scorer one and a half minutes into the second half. He didn't even put him in when the Ags got the lead down to 12. Something was not right between the coach and Chima...he pulled Chima after UNR scored inside on him twice early in the second half. My guess is Les didn't think Chima was being physical enough. I'm not a fan of benching a player like Chima for the rest of the half though.
I lost some respect for Eric Musselman. He's fiery and he didn't start pulling his starters until under 2 minutes left in the game even with our bench players playing 15-20 minutes. The game was well in hand for them but he wanted to run up the score...not cool, IMO.
I don't think I would want to be in the Ags locker room with Coach Les after these last two losses. We'll see how the team responds to his apparent displeasure with them...
I think John is playing really well but as a big man I really think he needs to become a better weapon in the paint - both for scoring and rebounding. He's a big body that plays like a shooting guard. Would love to at least see his rebounding numbers go up.
Side note - been reading AST forever now but finally made an account to post. Love this Aggie community and I hope it continues to grow! I steam every game down here in LA and have an annual tradition to go to the CSUN game!