One game for Monday, Nov. 18:

CSU Fullerton (home, 1-4) 62, Idaho State (2-3) 61

One would think so, if it is true that the voters over-react to a loss, as cmt noted, quite rightly IMHO.

Really? Why would they do that?

Roadrunners are 3-1 so far as areis CSUN, but Irvine, Santa Barbara and Hawai`i are all 4-0.

Games of Nov. 17

UC Santa Barbara (away) 64, San Jose State 59
Cal Poly (away) 82, Eastern Washington 78
Hawaii (home) 73, Weber State 68

CBS puts out the earliest FCS Coaches rankings and they have UC Davis at #4 still: https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/rankings/fcs-coaches-poll/

Thanks, but yes, I knew that. The first football game I saw in Davis was a bad loss (49-8) to Santa Clara, whose QB was Dan Pastorini, later to become an NFL starter. Our QB was Paul Hackett, who also did well in the NFL but not as a player. I also saw us lose to Boise State a couple of times. In those days, we didn't do all that well against FWC teams either. One year while I was there, we went 0-5 in conference and 3-7 overall.

St. Mary's was only in the FWC from 1925 to 1928. After that they were independent. I can see how the rest of the FWC saw UC Davis as a rival once the Sochor era started, but before that, I didn't see most of the other FWC schools feelng like we were the team to best, except Sac State, of course. On the other hand, I remember Santa Clara pounding us, as well as Boise State.

Any chance that the Causeway Classic could be a trap game? Normally, I wouldn't think any rivalry game would be a trap, but sometimes a team coming off a tough loss in a huge game and looking forward to playoffs might just overlook a clearly weaker team, rival or not.

When you play against a 7'1" forward who can make 5 3-pointers as well as pull down 14 boards, there's not much a defense can do. This game dimly echoed yesterday's football loss in that both Aggie teams might have won with better first half play.

TY found his mojo. Ags defending well. Down only 50-46 with 10:17 left!

TY not having a good game. Rocak has been playing well: 6 rebounds and solid defense on the Stanford Bigs. The team seems to have more energy in the second half.

Cardinal have an 11 point lead and are 11/13 from the foul line. Ags too slow on defense and forcing shots on offense. They'd better figure something out or it's going to be a blow-out.

The Stanford big man is killing us, 10 points in the first 7 minutes, as many as UCD has.

I hope the team can take away some valuable lessons from this game, not the least of which is that they are capable of coming back from adversity. I do not know enough about strategy to tell if the second half success was due to changes that the coaching staff made and/or changes in the approaches the players took against a powerful opponent, but whatever they were could be very useful in the playoffs. They aren't likely to face a better team for at least two games in.

As tremendous and exciting as the Aggies comeback on offense was, let us not forget the defense and special teams. After giving up that touchdown drive t open the second half, the D forced Montana State to punt on all their remaining possessions and special teams made that great onside kick to give us a chance.

Games of Nov. 16, 2024

CSUN 79, Sac State 69
Portland 63, Long Beach State 61
CSU Bakersfield 74, Fresno State 56
Seattle 84, UC San Diego 71
UC Irvine 80, Pepperdine 62

Big West teams are now 25-16 in the preseason. Not bad.

30-28 is definitely respectable against the #2 team to whom we were 7 point underdogs. Note we outgained MSU 414-333, not that it counts for anything.

I flashed on the Bob Biggs 16 point comeback against Hayward in 1972 (the one I left too early). This one would have been huge if only. So many "if onlys" in this one. At least we made Bobcat fans very nervous.

Awwwwwwwwwwww Nuts!