A true freshman OL, Souriolle, appears to have played in five games last season, which would burn a year of eligibility. That is unfortunate. Pretty rare that he played in the first game.

I think Porter Connors will be one of the starting linebackers. He started a game in 2022. They still have him listed as a DB, but he played linebacker after they changed his position on the roster.
Offense is solid. I think they can easily be better than 2022. 2023 was a big drop off.
Defense is going to suffer some. Losing Buchanan, Maae, Budgett all with remaining eligibility is painful. But lots of talent still here, The secondary is a strength.

Players who started any game last year and are on the 2024 roster.

WR Hutton, Gbatu, Davis, Tompkins
TE Gale, Simpson
RB Larison, Tompkins, Fisher
QB Hastings
LT Simonson
LG Souriolle
C Povey
RG Main
RT. Nava, Meynell

DT. Bearden
NG. Toki
DE Kennedy
Rush Sarac
Nickel Verner, Calhoun
SLB. Cloyd
MLB. No one
WLB. No one
BCB. Alexander
FCB. Gardner, Cotton
BS Rex Connors
FS Shamburger, Bains

They finally put a roster up on ucdavisaggies.com.

Jehiel Budgett isn’t listed. He was a Junior last year on the roster. They’ll miss him.

OL Povey, DB Verner, and DL Amone are all Grad Students.
Verner finally got to play here last year as a senior for pretty much the first time, so I kind of thought he had missed out on a good career, He transferred from Boise a few years ago, and may have been injured. Great scores in the NFL combine type drills.

Less than four months before football season which means there will be pre-season rankings by various publications starting in a month. Davis hasn’t provided the resources needed to gain votes. If you look at the schedule if they don’t start out with a win over Cal, they don’t have opportunities to get a quality win until the end of the season. Might be another year where we beat some ranked team end of year and they still get into the playoffs ahead of us.
The team hasn't revealed a roster. It hasn't updated player bios. The stats don't correctly list starters for the 2023 season. They haven't said which transfers participated in Spring.drills . There is no team website, social media, local paper, or even student newspaper coverage of the team this spring. In its place they promoted game atmosphere.
Hawkins was a personality that drew interest to the team. Plough isn’t that kind of personality and the sports information officer, if there is one, isn’t up to the task.

I guess they needed to decide that after spring practice, but the guy should have received some recognition earlier. If they had post season awards like they used to, he might have been transfer of the year. It’s not common to have transfers start their first game, after showing up just that summer.
I didn’t know he walked on.

Worst case scenario is they have Hicks in that role again. Davis got outplayed on special teams returns, but how much of that is the coach? Maybe I’ve forgotten some other failures.

Coaching roles where it isn’t clear who is currently filling them and they might want to add to staff.
Offensive Coordinator, QB coach, special teams coordinator, offensive quality control.

Who is the QB whisperer? Plough? Was someone the QB position coach?

Noa Masui has been out essentially since the Cal game in 2022. He made a couple of appearances at end of seasom in 2022, and had a tackle. Didn’t participate in a game in 2023.
Bearden would be a sixth year player, and would probably be a starter if he came back.
Both are examples of why it would be good to have a roster to show who is coming back. Either of those players might just call it a career.

Just have a spring roster, everyone could have used their phone, and costs virtually nothing.

Hope they release a spring roster online prior to end of spring practice.
Plough said on the Hawaii basketball game last week that confirmed Zach Kennedy was on the team. He listed Mateo Perez, Winston Williams as having had a “great camp”.

One of these players qualified because the team mapped his name to the wrong number and hence messed up the team statistics.

Big Sky Fall All-Academic recipients:
Markeece Alexander
Teddye Buchanan
Jeremiah Chukwudobe
Angelo Genetti
Jacob Horne
Luke Roncevich
Semaj Verner

To be eligible, a student-athlete must have met and/or exceeded the following minimum requirements: 1) Participated in at least half of the team's competitions; 2) Achieved a 3.2 cumulative grade point average (on a 4.0 scale) at the conclusion of the most recently completed term; 3) Completed at least one academic term at his/her current Big Sky institution.

The UC Davis football X account has a video of a pass completion thrown by #11. #11 last year belonged to Mitchell Dixon. I don’t know if he is wearing the number, but it might mean he has switched back from TE.

He was most recently the OC at Willamette. He has a QB technique video on the internet. He is likely who is the acting QB coach now.
The tight end coach Taylor Chapatte, and the running back coach have also been QB coaches elsewhere. Taylor Chapatte coached QBs at University of San Diego, Kevin Burke at D3 Mount Union.

If you sit in on the QB room meetings report who the coach is. i think Plough will be spread thin if he is the head coach, OC and QB coach. That would be a good question over coffee.

Yes it is hard but they pretend to do it.
If missing players was the extent of their failure it is excusable, but once they have players in their database, the minimum they should do is match the signees to schools and they didn’t do that.

247 Sports is so bad at rating these players, they should stop trying.
Example: Kyle Hill is listed on their site as 6’4” 180lb. No stars. Offered by Fresno State and San Jose State. He weighs 215 or 220 on other sources which is consistent with the offers he had. Missed his entire junior season, so that probably comtributes to 247 not rating him hightly.

https://www.desertsun.com/story/sports/high-school/football/2023/11/24/xavier-prep-football-star-kyle-hill-commits-to-uc-davis/71693244007/

They purport to rank every player with a numerical score.
They have some of our signees scored but not credited to Davis.
They are still adding people.

They think Jalen Harris is the top recruit ever, even better than a safety we had who never saw playing time.

Luca and Grant are listed as outside linebackers. Cloyd’s status I don’t know. He was said to be a junior last year.

Porter Connors is a stud. Cloyd is a veteran. Luca Sarac has started at the Rush position when they don’t start five DBs. Grant Garretson Is a JC transfer from last year who is a senior and is big. There will be some lower classman who hasn’t played much that will get a chance. They likely won’t be as tough to run up the middle against as last year, and we also lost two big nose guards.