I'm not sure of the year, perhaps 3 years ago, when the game at Hawai'i did not end well. I do not remember all the details but game got chippy near the end and some Hawai'i fans started throwing stuff onto the floor. Then a Hawai'i player got a technical in the final seconds. That fueled the fire and the boos rained down while an Aggie shot the FT's. The Aggies won the game.

At the final buzzer, Coach Les shuffled his team to the locker room and just waved at the Hawai'i coach and then he left the court also. There was no handshake line. Afterwards, Les said he just wanted to protect his players and didn't want anything to escalate further. It was probably the worst fan behavior I have seen since I began watching Aggie basketball although I'm sure it was instigated by only a small percentage of the fans.

BlueGoldAg,

Yes, I was at that game and, first, the media blew the incident out of proportion. I barely noticed it, but when one thing gets thrown I could hardly blame Coach Les for wanting to get his team off the court. As I recall, the Hawaii coach did not react strongly at all. Some fans booed the Ags, but I was not sure if that was because of Les' earlier protests of some officiating.

I'm sure that incident is not indicative of the great fans support Hawai'i has. I wish the Aggies would consistently have 6-7000 at our games.

Heads up Aggies fans. The game time shown in the title of this thread is wrong. The game will be televised live on Big West TV at 9 pm Pacific Time not 5 pm.

The play-by-play will be by the Hawai'i broadcast team who do a nice job. They are big homers, which is to be expected, but they also give credit to the opponents when they make a great play.

Live online stream at 9 pm: http://bigwest.sidearmstreaming.com/watch/?Live=489

Hawaii has the best quality streams if I recall correctly -- I'm glad this is the away game that I finally have time to catch!

Re: the infamous Hawaii game, my understanding from a reddit conversation about it recently think was that a player got T'd for mouthing off to the ref and the crowd got T'd for throwing a little giveaway ball onto the court -- both fouls happened between two Tyler Les free throws which resulted in him making six FTs in a row, which is a little tidbit that's bound to come in handy on a trivia night sometime.

Ags still lost that game actually but the 6 pts caught them up to make the score relatively close.

Thanks for the info about the game, Zander, my memory of it was fuzzy. I do remember Tyler Les shooting 6 FT's in a row which I've had never seen before nor since but I did not remember that the Ags lost the game.

We will be definite underdogs in this one. It's tough to win in Hawai'i and they have great fan support there. I watched part the UCSB game that Hawai'i won by a point. Both of those teams have some highly skilled basketball players. We will have to really bring our defense to have any chance at all because Hawai'i will have an overall advantage in athleticism not too mention playing at home before a large crowd.

Is there a big Aggie contingent on reddit? Never been on that site before.

BlueGoldAg

Thanks for correcting my error in posting the game time. You're absolutely right about the home crowd and the number of Aggies supporters is very small, usually about 50, mostly scattered around the arena, which holds 10,000. Hawaii fans tend to be fair weather and with them doing so well, there could be 8000 tonight. The TV quality should be good because it is a live broadcast for the local fans. And, yes, Bobby Curran is a University of Hawaii alum and he and his partner are definitely homers, but they do tend to be fair.

Should have noted that the Hawaii backcourt might have some problems. Both starting guards are going to play with injuries that might limit their effectiveness and there is not much depth there.

Decent, not great but not bad for a mid-major. The UC Davis page is more active than most colleges and Aggie sports got a lot of posts this past year thanks to MBB, WBB, and Football.

Then during the tourney run UC Davis became a meme on the college basketball page:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeBasketball/comments/5zqpm3/the_15_facts_that_prove_uc_davis_will_beat_kansas/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeBasketball/comments/60gk1a/an_open_letter_to_duke_fans_from_a_fan_of_fellow/

Anyone watching this? It's not been fun so far...Ags offense has gone missing in action again.

Yea. The zone really messes with our team. They need to pass to the post to break it.

This is ugly...

Well the Ags have kept within striking distance 39-35 somehow despite 12 turnovers and shooting 1 of 8 from 3...wow. This game has gotten chippy and the Hawai'i fans are booing the Ags like crazy. Jack Purchase flattens TJ gets called for a foul and then taunts TJ and gets a technical. Then Chima misses both FT's on the technical. I wouldn't want to be in the locker room with Coach Les.

I feel like we haven't gotten any points on our technical foul shooting all season.

Hawai'i downs the Ags 77-72 in another typically wild, chippy, ugly game between these two teams. The Ags somehow managed to be only 3 points down with 12.8 seconds left.

Thoughts:

- The difference in the game was that Hawai'i hit their 3's and FT's.

- The Ags turned the ball over 23 times and shot 3 of 19 from 3. Hawai'i turned the ball over 18 times but did manage to hit 8-20 3 point shots. 41 combined TO's between the two teams = ugly.

- The game was very chippy with a lot of talking and the Hawai'i fans booed their hearts out. Jim Les got a T and two Hawai'i players got technicals.

- Jack Purchase is an arrogant player who likes to taunt. He got T'ed up after he flattened TJ Shorts and then taunted him while Shorts was on the floor.

- Sheriff Drammeh committed a dirty and dangerous foul against Chima Moneke. As Drammeh was falling out of bounds with the ball, he turned and deliberately fired the ball with a two-handed slam motion into Chima's face point blank. Chima reeled backwards and held his face in both hands. Drammeh was given a technical foul. It was fortunate that the Chima was able to quickly turn his head just enough to avoid the ball hitting him squarely on his glasses. I was surprised Drammeh was not ejected from the game.

- After lighting up the Pavilion with 29 points last Wednesday, Siler Schneider's shooting went cold again. He was 6-18 from the field and only 1-8 from 3. He was also only 3-7 from the line and left critical points at the line during crunch time. Tough night for him.

- AJ John shot well 5-6 overall but has trouble staying in the game because of fouls.

- TJ Shorts is fearless and kept us in the game late with driving buckets. He scored 21.

- Hawai'i shot an airball in the first half that barely touched the bottom of the net. The Hawai'i timekeeper reset the game clock and Hawai'i worked the ball around and scored. The Hawai'i TV commentators said, "Well it looks like we got away with that one."

- Until we show that we can shoot somewhat consistently from the outside we are going to see nothing but zones to prevent Chima from getting the ball and collapse on him when he does. I'd be surprised to see anyone go man on us.

- The rematch in Davis is going to be a furious battle.

Purchase scores 21, hits late FT's; Hawai'i beats UC Davis

HONOLULU (AP) — Jack Purchase made 4 of 4 free throws in the final 40 seconds and finished with 21 points to help Hawaii hold on for its fourth consecutive win, 77-72 over UC Davis on Saturday night.

Sheriff Drammeh added 14 points, while Gibson Johnson and Leland Green scored 11 apiece, for Hawai'i (13-5, 4-1 Big West).

Buggs and Drammeh hit 3-pointers 44 seconds apart during a 10-0 run that gave Hawai'i a 49-39 lead with 14 minutes left and UC Davis trailed the rest of the way. The Aggies trimmed their deficit to three points on three occasions in the final 2½ minutes, but got no closer as Purchase scored six points and the Rainbow Warriors made 9 of 11 free throws from there.

TJ Shorts II had 21 points, five rebounds and five assists for the Aggies (12-7, 3-2) and Siler Schneider added 16 points. Chima Moneke had 14 points and nine rebounds, but committed nine of UCD's season-high 23 turnovers, which Hawai'i converted into 24 points.

The Rainbow Warriors had a season-best 13 steals — including three apiece by Purchase, Johnson, Green and Drew Buggs.

Hawaii is a tough place to play and the Rainbow Warriors are a pretty good team. They're in first place after last night's win.

Just got back from watching the game in person. I must have been at over a hundred college basketball games in my life between being in Davis and Hawaii, but I have never seen such bad officiating. If any of you saw it on BigWest TV and could not believe what you were seeing, believe it. The only good thing about it was that the refs (one in particular) called it bad both ways. I've never seen a Hawaii crowd get that worked up before (and I've been going to games here since 1974). They were more upset with the refs than booing the Aggie players.

Still, you can't blame the outcome on the refs. UCD was very sloppy, Chima especially. He had a lot of trouble handling the ball inside. A lot of this was due to a zone that collapsed on him, but he must have had a half dozen turnovers for game. In my opinion, though, the Aggies literally threw the game away int he first half when they made a lot of very sloppy passes. On the other hand, I have to give credit to Hawaii's back up backcourt players. Green (#0) and Buggs (#1) played much better than expected given that their regular starting point guard was hurt. My biggest concern was that Jack Purchase (#12) would get hot and he did. He's easily Hawaii's best shooter and not onluy did he make a lot of jump shots, but hit all (I think) of his free throws in the clutch.

The Aggies should be able to turn the table on Hawaii when the Warriors come to the Pavilion.

Yes, the Big West officiating leaves a lot to be desired and, from what I saw, it was particularly awful in this game. I can't blame Jim Les for getting a technical. I think he felt like he had to do something to get their attention and maybe get them to think a little bit more about how inconsistent they were with their calls.

The game was an ugly affair with all the turnovers: 23 for the Ags and 18 for the Warriors. Chima had 9 turnovers. Teams are surrounding him with double and triple teams every time he touches the ball in the paint. Hawai'i is athletic and has players with long, quick arms and, once he got surrounded, they were slapping and grabbing at the ball. It's going to be tough for him because all the Big West teams are zoning us and collapsing on Chima. He is going to have to do a better job of securing the ball quickly and our guards can not continue to force the ball inside with passes that are down low on him and difficult to handle with 3 defenders surrounding him.

Of course, we can't continue to shoot 3 for 19 from beyond the arc and expect any team to feel like we can hurt them from the outside. Teams are happy to let us continue to miss from the perimeter and pack it in the paint. We did a nice job against the LBSU zone but our outside shooting went missing again against Hawai'i.

Unfortunately, Jack Purchase got hot against us when he hadn't been shooting all that well lately. I agree that he is also a hot head and he deserved the technical he got. The punk play by Sheriff Drammeh when fired the ball into Chima's head was a potentially dangerous, cheap shot. I was surprised that he didn't get ejected. That was totally unnecessary and could have caused a serious injury if the ball had slammed into Chima's nose and glasses. It was amazing that Chima kept his cool when that happened.

Our games against Hawai'i nearly always seem to get chippy. The Warriors usually have a few players who are very demonstrative and try to get under the skin of their opponents. It generally happens more in the games on the island but I've seen it happen in the Pavilion also. The Aggies will be more than ready when the Warriors come to Davis.

BlueGoldAg

I am beginning to suspect that Hawaii fans are starting to think of UC Davis as one of the "bad guys" in the Big West, even though the Warriors are 6-2 out here vs the Aggies. I do not think the Hawaii coach contributes to this, since he is pretty low key. The true Hawaii fans have long memories though and they still remember the time Corey Hawkins & Co. stormed a hail of threes back in 2013 or the game in which Coach Les left early to protect his players. This could develop into a rivalry. It's too bad, but nothing will stop me from going to each game the Ags play here wearing my colors. I look forward to it. I messed up on every post I wrote about this game, but I use my excitement as an excuse.

Toke69, I appreciate you taking the time to talk about Aggie basketball and report on how you see things from your perspective on the island. I also appreciate that you have stayed true to and proud of your alma mater. Once an Aggie, always and Aggie!