Bob Hamilton used to schedule a lot of preseason games against teams from major conferences. I faintly recall one year when he took them on a road trip to play Michigan and Minnesota (two Big-10 teams at any rate). He always said it was to give them the experience of playing against top caliber opponents so they would learn how great teams work together. The counter argument was that it was bad for morale, but the two years I was there as an undergraduate, they won two Far Western Conference titles.

I really like this team. They were down by 18 and 15 to two PAC-12 teams in consecutive road games and came back strong to make it close. Manjon is a special player and I would bet he'll be the Big West newcomer of the year. I appreciate what DrMike said about Pepper and Koehler both having made big strides in their game. That's a sign of good coaching and I would say that both are pretty impressive for their smart play and hustle.

I had to record and watch the game today, but I was pretty impressed by what the Aggies were doing against Cal. Cal is no Utah, but they are not likely to finish 12th in the Pac-12 as everyone in the national media thinks. Neither will UC Davis finish 8th in the Big West. Ezra Manjon reminds me of T. J. Shorts in a lot of ways (pardon me if some of you have posted this observation before but this was the first time I've seen an Aggie game this season). He's very quick, very smart, has some great moves to the hoop and handles the ball as a point guard should. I was pretty excited when the Ags took a lead but did not expect them to win even then. Cal has too much size. Given that disadvantage, I was a bit surprised that Neufeld played so little and that Koehler played so much. I did notice that we took the lead while Koehler was in there so maybe Coach Les liked the chemistry of that five-some.

My first chance to see this year's Aggie Men's b-ball team. I'm not expecting the Ags to win, but I hope they are competitive. Last year, they could have beaten a Cal team that was not well disciplined. Their new coach has them playing a lot better and they have a lot more talent than UC Davis.

A disappointing end to a disappointing season.

I see that we're playing Sac State in the Causeway Classic too. That's quite a hornet double header. Go Ags!

It's kind of sad to see the lack of posts on this site as of late. I checked back to 3 years ago and saw 172 posts for a Big West tournament game against UC Irvine. Everybody likes a winner. There are 353 Division 1 teams and VMI is ranked by Jeff Sagarin at 339, so you know where that puts the Ags. Nobody likes a loser. Yeah we beat Idaho, which is ranked 335 and William Jessup, not ranked. But as I said in a previous post, it is easy to face a season with low expectations and as the Ags did when T J. Shorts first showed up, a young team can become a pleasant surprise. I've got a lot of faith in Jim Les to get this team to gel and I do not think they will place 8th in the Big West.

There's something to be said for low expectations. It is more likely that you will be happy with a few victories, especially upsets. Less likely to be terribly disappointed. I had high expectations for the football team, even though I've always been more of a basketball fan, and the Aggies have been a disappointment there. I don't think the basketball team will be disappointing and I'll be there when they come to Hawaii, rooting for an upset and getting pelted by pineapples.

I must be missing something. According to up to date Big Sky standings, UC Davis is 1-2, but they've only played two conference games: Montana and Cal Poly. Neither North Dakota nor North Dakota State are in the Big Sky. What other Big Sky team did they lose? Cal?

Street & Smith's has UC Davis as coming in 7th ahead of Cal Poly and the Titans. I don't expect many prognosticators to rate the Aggies very high, but nothing like low expectations to make things more exciting if an when those expectations are exceeded.

I thought that once a player cleared waivers and another team (Jacksonville) claimed him, his original team (Oakland) could not touch him unless the Jags released him. Not sure how this works. Did Jacksonville release him? In any case, glad to see him back to the Bay Area, at least for a year.

Note that the tight victory over San Diego did not affect the Aggies position in the FCS poll. They're still at #4.

This makes up for my huge mistake back in 1972 when I went to Hayward and left with the Ags down by 15 and less than 3 minutes to play. You old timers probably remember that Bob Biggs brought the Aggies back to score 16 points. My friends never let e forget that, but I got online in time today to see the Toreros stopped. I hope USD's home record prevents UCD from falling too far in the polls.

Thanks CA Forever. I was able to watch that tense ending.

Give credit to the D for making USD work for it, but bottom line, Ags were lucky.

It's either a touchdown or a touchback

Will there be any way to see the game on streaming video? I did not see anything on the Big Sky website.

I watched the game on the Pac-12 network. Looked like the Cal O-line and rush game just wore out the Aggie D. Still, O thought the Ags showed that they were there to play. One of Cal's linebackers after the game said that Davis gave the Bears all they could handle. Time will tell if Cal is a high caliber (no pun intended) team or not. For what it's worth, this was the 10th time the Ags have played Cal and Cal has won all of the games. This was tied for closest game with 14 point losses in 1932 and 1937. Much better than the only game in the past 80 years way back in 2010. I'm sure many of you remember that score.

I'd put my money on Arizona taking Keelan. Not only could they use a WR, but they saw what he could do in pre-season game 2.

I had thought each UC campus had their own shade of blue, for example, UCLA always wears a shade I'd call light blue, but on checking, all campuses have the same color: Yale blue. UCLA's sports colors are not the "official ones." Too bad, I like the idea of some kind of differentiation. Someone should suggest it for events like tomorrow's