The Aggies left their defense in the locker room at halftime. Les needs to get the attention of his players before this game gets completely out of reach real quick.

13 TO's by the Ags and 10 by the Eaters. Our defense has been excellent again holding Irvine to 36% shooting while we're doing better than usual on offense shooting 45%. All the rest of the stats are very even. I hope we'll continue to keep the game within reach in the 2nd half and give ourselves a chance for a upset win.

From The Big West Banter by Gauchodan:

GAME OF THE AFTERNOON. When all the rest of the games involve at least one team with a losing conference record, you earn the sobriquet by default. UC Davis entered the week with the toughest remaining schedule in the Big West, thus beginning a closing run vs. a gauntlet. The Aggies (12-9, 6-4) lost Thursday at UC Riverside on a Nate Pickens 3-pointer with 5 seconds left and now must turn around and face a team that doesn’t lose on its home court.

Conference scoring leader TY Johnson (21.2 ppg) has scored at least 20 points in 5 straight games. Pablo Tamba scored just 4 points at Riverside but is averaging 11.1 ppg on 64% shooting from the floor. Connor Sevilla averages 2.1 made threes per game on 37.9% shooting from the perimeter and is 33 of 34 (.971) from the free throw line. Niko Rocak has three double doubles and is pulling down 7.8 rebounds per game. Leo DeBruhl is the other 3-point threat for UC Davis at .373.

The Anteaters (19-3, 9-1) survived a legitimate scare from lowly Long Beach State on Thursday, needing to score the final 7 points of regulation just to get to overtime. A Quad 4 loss would have surely ended any discussion of a safety-valve at-large bid. As it was, UC Irvine saw its NET rank fall two positions. My amended position is that UC Irvine can afford one more regular season loss ONLY against UC San Diego, CSUN or perhaps the season finale at UC Santa Barbara (I’m very wobbly on that). UC Davis, despite its contender status in the Big West, is another Quad 4 opponent and a must win for UCI on the at-large front. UC Irvine has won 21 straight games at home, where it plays its next 3 games.

Bent Leuchten leads the team in scoring (15.4 ppg) and leads the conference in double doubles with 10. Leuchten pulls down 9 rebounds per game and has even made 13 three-pointers this season, on 26 attempts. Devin Tillis, the hero of Thursday night’s game with two overtime 3-pointers, is averaging 9.2 rebounds in his last 5 games. Myles Che posted his third 20-point performance of the season Thursday at Long Beach and is averaging 16.4 points per game and 3.6 assists since New Year’s Day. Justin Hohn is 4th on the team (12.0 ppg) in scoring despite taking by far the most shots on the squad (10.9 attempts per game). Jurian Dixon has reached double digits in scoring in 4 of his last 5 games.

https://bigwestbanter.substack.com/p/halftime-is-over?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3137908&post_id=156190348&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=31ratq&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Here are some excerpts from a Sacramento Bee opinion piece about the proposed new Sac State football stadium written by Tom Philp yesterday. The article is too long for me to copy and paste in its entirety. The author is of the opinion that Dr. Wood has made a lot of public comments about how fast things are happening in regards to the new stadium and Sac's move up to FBS with little to show for it so far. The author also is critical about how difficult it has been for the Bee to obtain factual information from the university concerning the actual plans, projected costs and funding for all the changes that Dr. Wood has said are currently underway in Sac State Athletics.

It is going to take about twice as long as planned for Sacramento State to get its first glimpse of what it may cost to build a gleaming new football stadium. The project’s first cost estimate, initially scheduled for completion in February, now won’t be done until this summer at the earliest.

Frankly, the university could use the time. It has been struggling ever since that initial September announcement to promptly provide some basic public information about where things stand with this ambitious project. The best chance for success is for Sac State to be an open book, particularly with the students who are paying a disproportionate share of the cost of university athletics.

University President Luke Wood had no cost estimate in hand when he confidently unveiled his plan to build a 25,000-seat stadium on the same site as the temporary facility that has been the football team’s home for decades. But he did set in motion a crucial analysis to get a better idea of what a stadium might cost and to assess local residents’ interest in watching Sacramento State football play some tougher competition in a truly modern facility.

That September announcement included plans to contract with a San Francisco-based architectural firm, Populous, “to create the conceptual design for the stadium.” To its credit, the university has provided The Bee with its $318,000 contract with Populous.

Other than releasing the Populous contract, every other attempt by The Bee for information about university athletics has been slow-walked by the university. Sacramento State has been committing its own version of “delay of game,” a football penalty when the offense doesn’t get the play off in time.

Wood is attempting to achieve something that has eluded all his predecessors: pooling public and private funds into the nine-figure sum needed to build a stadium suitable for the Sacramento State and for top-division football. This feat will not be easy. Yet belief in its prospects is diminished by Wood’s administration slow-walking any request for basic information about this project.

In hindsight, it’s now pretty clear that Wood did not have much research about costs and revenues when he confidently announced his plans to build this state-of-the-art football stadium last September. He’s now learning on the fly. It would be a coup for the region to climb into the higher echelons of this treasured college sport. But given how little we currently know, it’s simply too soon to tell.

Whole article here: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article297901063.html

Sacramento State President Luke Wood revealed to The State Hornet that the school’s new multi-use stadium will be built in three phases and shared new information about Sac State’s potential move to the FBS

Wood said the first phase of construction on the stadium will begin this year, adding around $2.5 million in new amenities, but did not share what the estimated final cost of the stadium would be.

This information comes off the heels of Wood making several public statements about Sac State making the jump to the FBS, the highest subdivision in college football. Wood said that Sac State has spoken with three FBS conferences in the region and that a move will not happen in 2025.

Whole article here: https://statehornet.com/2025/01/sac-state-stadium-construction-plans-fbs-luke-wood/

From Bob Dunning's Substack column:

"I can't fault our energy and our desire, but they just made one more play than we did," said Aggie head coach Jim Les afterward.

"It's hard to get a win on the road, but we battled the whole way and gave ourselves a chance to win. We had a little bit of a breakdown on their three-pointer at the end. That's not the look we wanted to give them."

As it turns out, that was the only score that Pickens had in 26 minutes of action.

https://www.thewaryone.com/p/late-3-point-dagger-stops-aggies?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2582284&post_id=156152601&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=31ratq&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Tough loss for the Ags. Both teams kept battling back and forth for the whole game and the Ags just came up 2 points short. We need to put this one behind us and focus on getting an upset at Irvine on Saturday.

Vegas has us as 6 point underdogs currently.

I'm glad to see that Poly got that monkey of their backs!

Yes, it was the 5th straight win at Davis. I edited my post. Thanks.

I love watching the Aggie defense and the 1-2-2 zone defense that they use a lot just make the opponent use some clock getting the ball across half court is really effective. I think we forced two 10 second violations and we double teamed the ball a couple of times which forced TO's by the Bows.

When the Aggie defense is locked in it's fun to watch. Les and his assistants do such a great job of scouting our opponents and they come up with a solid defensive plan that focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of each individual player of our opponents. Our players know the tendencies of our opponents and often force them away from their strengths. That's great defense and, along with our press, it takes a lot of energy and stamina to keep up that level defensive pressure. Les does a good job of rotating players in and out so that they can get a much needed blow.

Terrific defense by the Aggies who held Hawaii to 35.8% FG shooting for the game. Hawaii came into the game shooting 48.7% which is the best in the conference. The Ags held the Bows to 23 points in the first half which was a season low for them.

I can understand Rocak's frustration when he got T'ed up for slamming the basketball to the floor after getting whistled for his 4th foul. The officiating was very uneven. They were calling a whole lot of fouls in the second half around the perimeter while allowing extremely physical contact and wrestling for position between Niko and Hawaii's bigs in the paint.

I hate it when they allow that much contact in the paint prior to a shot and then call Rocak for a foul if there was any contact at all even when he had his arms straight up. How the heck is Niko supposed to be able to defend big players without getting called for a foul when they are allowed to slam into him repeatedly and then lean in initiating the contact while shooting?

This was the Ags 5th straight win in a row over Hawaii.

UCSD really has it going. They had 3442 fans at the Lion Tree Arena for their win over UCSB which is the 4th largest crowd they have ever had since moving to D1.

Ags lose 56-46. Dreadful 3 point shooting by the Aggies. They were 1-21 for 4.7%.

I watched a good portion of the first half but both teams were playing so poorly that I turned it off. It was just not good basketball by either team. At one point, the two teams had a combined 17 TO's which was more than the total points they had scored up to that point in the game.

Ags by a bucket at the half 25-23.

Tough defensive battle so far with very few fouls. The Bows average 50% shooting and they’re at 29% so far.

First time we’ve seen Marsalis Roberson play. Looks like he’s finally been medically cleared to play after he tore his ACL.

Very small crowd tonight.