The Aggies, ranked #8 in the latest mid-major poll, put their undefeated conference record on the line against Fullerton tonight in the Pavilion at 7 pm. Every conference win so far has been a battle for the Aggies even if the final scores don't necessarily reflect it. The Ags have a big target on their backs in every game and Fullerton would love to knock the Aggies out of the unbeaten conference ranks tonight.
The Ags have been struggling with too many TO's lately and I would imagine that the Titans will try and pressure the Ags into mistakes and hope to get them rattled. Fullerton is a very athletic squad so the Ags know the pressure is coming and, hopefully, Jen Gross and her staff have made some adjustments since the Poly game where the Ags literally nearly threw the game away with multiple TO's in the final quarter. The Ags are a veteran team, however, and I expect that their confidence and poise will help them stay the course, make the necessary adjustments and do a much better job handling the pressure.
I found the following NCAA bracketology prediction on the ucdavisaggies.com website and found it interesting:
In his latest bracketology projection of 2018 released on Jan. 22, ESPN’s Charlie Creme has the Aggies carrying the Big West banner into the NCAA Tournament as a No. 12 seed -- up from a No. 14 seed at UCLA at the start of the month and a jump of one spot as a No. 13 seed at Missouri entering last week -- pitted against No. 5 Maryland in the opening round, and joined by No. 4 Texas A&M and No. 13 American University in College Station, Texas. The Terrapins are ranked No. 14, while Texas A&M is ranked No. 15, in the latest Associated Press poll. The Eagles, meanwhile, spent last week ranked No. 15 in the College Insider Mid-Major poll.
33-27 Aggies at the half. All the offense has been from Bertsch with 17 and Gianotti with 8. I'd like to see some more production from the other players.
Stat that tells the story: CSF went 2-14 from the field during the 4th Q. Half of the 10 points they scored in the quarter were from the free throw line.
Ags move to 6-0 in the conference and 16-3 overall with a 67-53 win behind 23 points from Morgan Bertsch and 21 from Pele Gianotti. The Aggie defense was very good throughout the game and the Ags scored 38 points in the paint.
I think we might see the press from SB. They have small, quick guards and I'm sure they watched that chaos that Poly created in the 4th quarter against the Ags with their aggressive press.
I hope we play well against SB on Saturday and get another win against them. I'm not a fan of their coach. I have watched her get interviewed twice by their play-by-play broadcast team after the Aggies beat them in SB the last two years. She never gives credit to the Aggies, she just complains about what her team didn't do that that she says essentially made it easy for the Aggies. She comes across as a real sourpuss that just can't bring herself to say anything good about the Ags.
Sac has a good FC press scheme and we creamed them off it with easy layups. I think the poly game was an anomaly and maybe just surprised us. At least i hope so.