Since we’ve gone a while without a men’s game, figured I’d pass along something I found interesting. Mike had wondered earlier if we lose any payers to the portal, partly because of the extra year players are getting, the ease of the transfer portal, and from all the games that the Ags have had canceled compared to other programs. Manjon is the first named that jumps out, but this article (from a wsu fan site) speculates about Pepper. Makes sense from a location stand point, but it seems like he’d go from a possible first team all conference, to just another piece on an mid pac-12 team (at best). Anyways just interesting speculation and info on how others view Pepper.

Mid-Major Guards

Hope we can actually play on Saturday. I assume we'll hear soon if it's cancelled as they need to give Bakersfield enough notice.

Good win. Pretty much cruised the entire second half. Seem to be rounding into form.

Pulled it out late. Much needed win for confidence if nothing else. Certainly one of Burns’ best games so far.

Megan Jones getting some early minutes along with Mazi Harris. I like the use of the bench so far

It really feels like a lost season

Here’s one of Manjon’s magic moves.

I didn’t notice Shaw. That’s good. Not that either will play major roles the rest of the way but there might be moments when we need the depth. If nothing else, it’ll be good to have a full roster at practice.

I was a bit surprised Bora didn’t get any court time. He’s been giving us 4 or 5 good minutes per game recently and I thought that with Hawaiis size advantage, he might be valuable. Also looked like Ba was dressed so he must be close to getting some minutes. I could see him getting some time when we need some outside shooting.

Very exciting win. Hawaii is a tough matchup but Manjon was almost unstoppable. Adebayo went fro goat to hero in about 10 secs.

I wonder if he’s dealing with lower back pain that’s reducing his offensive productivity. The last couple of games he’s had that brace on that looks like some sort of electrical stimulation.

That team shot 45% from 3 with Hawkins at 49%!

I hope you're right. I do think we played better defense at UCR than last weekend, so hopefully the more consistent schedule (both game and practice) is paying off.

By the way, I happened upon the ESPNU game vs SLO from 2015 on youtube. Crazy how loaded that team was. Starters were Hawkins, Graham, Avery Johnson (very underrated player), JT and Ritchart, with Lemar, Monson, Fox and Tyler Les coming off the bench. That team went 25-7 but was upset in the BW semi's by Hawaii (hey, I tied this tangent into this string!) From a pure talent perspective, that might have been our best team top to bottom (Michael Onyebalu, a future starter, was basically the last man on the bench). And the Pavillion was going crazy!

We are certainly going to have to bring our A+ defense in this game. Hawaii is athletic and can shoot from deep. If we push out on defense to stop the long range shots, that's going to open up the driving lanes, and since we don't really have much of a shot blocker down low, we could see a lot of driving shots. Or, if we slough off to cut down on the lanes, definitely going to give up some open 3's. We are going to have to really play good team defense.

So obviously TOs are a continuing issue, but boy were there a lot of poor in-game decision, and I'm going to guess that most those (at least last night) come from being tired. Four of our starters were well over 30 mins, with Burns at 25 mins. The bench was Harris and Svanholm at 15 and 14mins and that's about it. Hawaii only had one player right at 30 mins, and 9 players at 15 or more minutes. I know coach Gross wants to keep her starters in as much as possible, but it certainly looked like Hawaii was the fresher and more energetic team in the 4th quarter. Let's see 10 mins from Shine, Gray, Langi, and Sanders (of course, I don't know the health of everyone, so that might be a factor, but we've seen Coach Gross lean heavily on her starters throughout the year).

As Dr Mike pointed out, this shot, along with the floater on the next possession, could be the biggest shots of the season so far. To be honest, I cringed when he took it. No no no…YES YES YES!

Weird that we’ve been better away from home this year.

Amazing what happens when you hit a good percentage of 3s. Fuller with a big 3 followed by a shot clock beating floater. Two biggest makes of the game.

From what I've heard, neither Hunter nor Crawford will be back. That's not from them directly, so i guess we don't know for sure.

I'm sure he will. He had a really nice stretch of plays on Saturday when he made a nice move from the left hand block to bank in a shot, then followed it up with a block (maybe two) on the defensive side. As a lot of young big men do, he struggles with faster opponents. But i'd also like to see him get a few more minutes each game. Only way he is going to get better is with court time.