The Aggies will try and get a road sweep today when they go to battle with the 49ers at 4 pm today in the Walter Pyramid. The game will be televised on ESPN3 and should be a good one. The Aggies currently sit on top of the Big West along with UCSB and Long Beach is only one game behind. The Ags won the first game between these two teams 84-75 back on January 17th in the Pavilion.
This will be another classic battle between the league leading Aggie defense and the 49ers high flying offense. The Ags have shown that they can grind out wins and depend on their defense to get stops at crunch time. They'll need to be locked in defensively today and dictate the game pace to slow the 49ers who will want to run and gun in front of their home fans. Our big men will also need to stay out of foul trouble while containing Tamidayo Yussef the talented 49er post. One of the best players in the Big West, Gabe Levin, has the ability to take over a game so making things difficult for him will be a key element for the Aggies as well.
We don't have anyone who can effectively replace Chima. With him being sent back to Davis on "indefinite suspension" we could be toast. We have no big man with his kind of talent. This could be the straw that broke the camel's back for this team. I feel for the players. Chima must have f...ed up big time. Wow...
I finally got a chance to go on BigWestTV. It's half-time and the Ags clearly miss Chima, but Shorts is doing a great job penetrating and Schneider is holding up his end of offense. The 49ers have a big edge on the boards. I'm sure that the game will go down to the wire. Has anyone noticed the huge screen on the Pyramid's wall behind the backboard? Gotta be a distraction for the foul shooters with some the images on there. I want to see what is there when Long Beach is on the line.
This was perhaps the guttiest win I have ever seen by an Aggie team and Lord knows the officials weren't helping us out!
Great interview with coach Les on the radio post-game interview. He said they drew up a play on the time out with 6.9 seconds left. He figured that LB would press and try and deny the ball to TJ on the inbounds so they thought they might be able to get the ball in his hands on the second touch. He said Joe Mooney did a great job of getting the ball into Rogers Printup who was then able to make that nice pass to TJ streaking down the left sideline. Les laughing said that normally he would have preferred for TJ to take it to the rim but, since the 3 ball runner went through the net, he fine with the way it turned out. He said he told the team that they deserved to win today and he would have been heartbroken if we had lost given how hard the Aggies played.
In the interview with Scott Marh, TJ said he just decided it was time to try and win it rather than take it to the rim and when he let it fly it felt good. Coach Les said he was happy that we didn't go into a 3rd OT because we could have ended up playing with only 4 or even 3 players because of all the fouls we had and, again laughingly, he said, "I don't have any plays for that."
I couldn't be more proud of this team to come out and play their hearts out like that after the disappointment of Chima being suspended. I'm still stunned...fantastic win!!!!
I'll tell you what also: we've got ourselves an outstanding D1 basketball coach. His players play their hearts out game in and out and, when they don't, they find themselves on the bench. We win a lot of games just because we never quit grinding and that's a tribute to our coaches. They've created a competitive culture and the players hold themselves accountable for maximum effort.
I loved seeing Kevin Blue and Coach Les hugging on the court and grinning ear to ear after the game too.
I totally agree with you that that was a very gutsy win by the Aggies. On reflection, the whole team made the effort to keep it close enough for Shorts to win the game on that incredible basket. All 9 guys who played scored and every one of them except Hennings got a rebound. They also only made 6 turnovers after the opening minutes. All of this, too, after Moneke got suspended and you have to believe that their original game plan included Chima, so the coaches had to have made some great adjustments.