Sounds like he might have a groin injury. Those are painful and often slow to heal. I've had one before and it was painful to just walk at times. I hope he heals up quickly. He may not put up the biggest numbers but I feel like he's a solidly grounded, team oriented player who contributes a lot when he's on the floor.

I thought the game yesterday was a typical, fairly small crowd with pretty good energy that we often have. The game against Sac was the biggest and most vocal crowd and the crowds at the games against Irvine and Santa Barbara were smaller but quite energetic also. I expect we'll have a good crowd for our final home against Hawaii. We have a pretty good rivalry with the Bows and it will be senior night also.

He's appears to be struggling with something and his body language has looked "discouraged" lately. I like what he brings to the team when he is playing solid minutes.

I'm assuming that they will have to buy out many of the games they have already scheduled. So, as you said, the cost of joining the MAC will go even higher than the predicted $20-$23 million. They must have some big donor or donors behind them that they are keeping under largely wraps because, if they don't, I think Wood may have created a fire storm of criticism from the Sac State students who feel like academics and the welfare of the students takes the back seat to his obsession with moving football to the FBS at any cost.

Excerpts from the Sacramento Bee:

Sacramento State’s football program will reportedly move up to the FBS level of play this coming season, and will pay upward of $20 million in entrance fees to do so.

The Mid-American Conference will add Sac State as a football-only school following a vote by the conference’s presidents, ESPN’s Pete Thamel first reported and two people with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed Saturday to The Sacramento Bee. An official announcement of the deal is expected in the coming days.

ESPN reported the expected entrance fee to the MAC at $18 million, on top of a $5 million fee to the NCAA to move from the Football Conference Subdivision of Division I football, or FCS, to the higher-level Football Bowl Subdivision, FBS.

Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported earlier this month that the MAC was exploring the possibility of adding Sacramento State and that the university had offered “upwards of $10 million” in proposed entry fees to other FBS-level conferences and, that Sac State’s had surpassed $15 million.

University President Luke Wood, one week earlier in an interview with The Bee, said Sacramento State “plan(s) to play in the FBS in 2026” but declined to speak on specific dollar figures or conferences.

Sacramento State, at the end of the current academic year, is departing the Big Sky Conference. The university announced last June that all major sports would be moving to the Big West Conference, which does not field a football program, after this summer.

The university last summer requested a waiver to move up to the FBS as an independent — without any conference affiliation. The NCAA denied that request.

North Dakota State last week announced its own move from the Missouri Valley Football Conference, an FCS league, to the FBS-level Mountain West. North Dakota State is paying $12.5 million to the Mountain West as its entry fee, ESPN’s Thamel reported.

Moving to the MAC specifically would present logistical challenges, as Sacramento State would be the MAC’s only West Coast team, with more than half its universities in Michigan or Ohio.

Wood, an alumnus, took over as university president in July 2023 and has championed the sought-after promotion to FBS-level football as a boost to the entire university. Critics including Sacramento State students have at times characterized Wood as focused too closely on university athletics at the expense of academics, while Wood has repeatedly touted FBS promotion as a worthwhile investment.

Is Cal Expo stadium still on track?

With an FBS conference invitation reportedly secured, the next order of business would be to determine where the Hornets will play in 2026.

In fall 2024, Sac State announced plans to open a new, 25,000-seat football stadium on-campus. Last August, Cal Expo and Sacramento State announced they were exploring a plan that would instead see Cal Expo’s defunct horse racing track and grand stand transformed into the Hornets’ new football stadium as early as 2026.

Wood in a post to X on Wednesday said the Cal Expo stadium plan remains on track for the coming football season.

“Everything is moving forward as planned. Most analyses are now done. Looking forward to a future football stadium. The future is bright for Sac State!” he wrote. “We are readying our current stadium to be ready for FBS ambitions until new stadium is on line.”

The agreement between Cal Expo and Sacramento State last week was for an exclusive negotiating window, with few details publicly released since then.

Cal Expo hosted its first-ever football game, the 52nd annual Pig Bowl, in late January. That charity game between law enforcement and firefighters took the field at Heart Health Park, home to the Republic FC soccer club that is planning its own move to a new stadium being built at the downtown Railyards development.

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/sports/college/article314706848.html#storylink=cpy

Channel 3 KCRA News reported tonight that the cost for Sac State to join the MAC is "expected to be $23 million."

Where does the $18 million come from when all the Cal State Universities are facing budget problems?

The Ags battled tough in the second game losing 6-4 and they had the tying runs on base in the 9th.

Standings as of 2/14:

Irvine 86 Fullerton 65
San Diego 72 Riverside 66

CSUN 84 Hawaii 60 Final

I hadn't thought of that.

The Big West is living up to it's Wild, Wild West reputation! Now we need Fullerton to knock off Irvine and Riverside to upset San Diego tonight as well.

The race at the top could be tightening up a bit:

Poly 89 Santa Barbara 79
CSUN leads Hawaii 53-37 with 15:44 to go.

From Gauchodan's Big West Substack column:

2:00 PM: Long Beach State at UC Davis — The Beach (8-17, 4-9) have lost 6 straight games to fall 2 games out of Big West Tournament qualifying position. Freshman Gavin Sykes made his return to the Long Beach starting lineup, scoring 12 points but turning the ball over 3 times (vs. one assist) in 32 minutes of action. Petar Majstorovic has averaged 20.3 points over the last 3 games, making 19 of 39 shots from the field (.487) and 24 of 28 free throws attempts (.857). The Aggies (15-10, 8-6) saw their 3-game winning streak swatted away in a 68-51 loss at UC San Diego. UC Davis fell out of a 4th-place tie with CSUN and into a 5th-place tie with Cal State Fullerton. Davis couldn’t hit shots from any distance on Thursday…the Aggies were 38.1% from two, 30% from three and just 1 for 7 (14.3%) from the free throw line, failing to take advantage of 21 takeaways.

https://bigwesthoops.substack.com/p/road-show?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2973109&post_id=187884117&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=31ratq&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Current standings as of 2/12:

Jumping right into the fire opening the season at Texas. It would be amazing to snag a win against one of the best baseball programs in the nation.