71-58 Aggies - Final.

Teams are playing Pepper very tough lately. He has to fight through a lot of contact and it’s been hard for him to find a rhythm.

36-25Ags at the half. Very physical game.

Many thanks for keeping the recruiting thread alive and updated each year. It's one of the most popular topics on this forum every year. Time for all of to start snooping around for possible 2024 recruits. Go Ags!

Will you be attending tonight's event, agalum? Let us know what you hear if you are able to attend.

I haven't heard anything about TY's injury but it certainly did not look good. The replay didn't capture what exactly happened to him other than showing him on floor clutching his chest. He came back in but had to leave the game after a minute or so. I sure hope he didn't tear something or crack a rib. I wonder if Adebayo will be back or not also. It will be a tough game even if we are at full strength and much tougher if either or both of them are out.

Looks like a great recruiting class all together.

Cyrus Durham, 6'4 240 LB out of the College of San Mateo, signed with Arizona. He'll be joining former Aggie great Chubba Ma'ae who transferred in December.

Closer to home and joins Brianna Turner.

Despite not shooting the ball at his usual proficiency level, Eli Pepper was named the Big West Player of the Week. He's such a great all-around player that, even when his shots aren't falling at a high percentage, he's contributing with rebounds, assists, steals and tough defense.

DAVIS, Calif. — UC Davis senior guard Elijah Pepper has been announced the Big West Men's Basketball Player of the Week for his efforts during the week of Jan. 29 - Feb. 4, the conference office announced on Monday.

The Big West's leading scorer, Pepper averaged 20.0 points, 7.5 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 3.0 steals per game en route to another 2-0 week for the Aggies.

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2024/2/5/mens-basketball-pepper-named-big-west-player-of-the-week.aspx

2/03 games:

Aggies 59 Cal Poly 52
Long Beach 85 San Diego 76
Irvine 93 Hawaii 68
Santa Barbara 70 Bakersfield 59
CSUN 76 Riverside 70

Current Standings:

FROM HEAD COACH JOE PASTERNACK

"I thought we struggled defensively in the first half. The main thing is our turnovers; we have a problem with them and had 16 in the game. When we played them last time at their place, we also had 16 turnovers. Credit to them, Davis did a great job and they are a really good team. But we had 10 turnovers in the first half, and that really destroyed us. I thought we played them even in the second half, but unfortunately, this is a two-half game. You have to defend for a full 40 minutes and take care of the ball and rebound."

https://ucsbgauchos.com/news/2024/2/2/mens-basketball-gauchos-rally-falls-short-against-uc-davis.aspx

Yikes...this game had a total of 44 TO's between the two teams: 23 for Poly and 21 for the Aggies. Turner had played the full 40 minutes but only scored 3 points and was only 1-10 shooting. That's the lowest point total for her that I can ever remember...it may well be her lowest ever...

I've heard Jim Les say that good teams find a way to win even when it's ugly and, man, that was an ugly basketball game. Connor Sevilla came off the bench after TY got injured and he saved our butts by shooting 4-4 including two clutch 3's to stop the bleeding while we were close to squandering an 18 point lead. Teams are finding ways to make things very difficult for Pepper. We really need Milling to find some offensive continuity. Oh well...it goes in the W column...

25-23 Aggies in a ugly half of basketball. I'm glad our defense has been pretty good because our offense is nowhere to be found yet. We better come out and play much better in the second half because you know that Poly can smell blood in the water.

All tied up at 26 at the half.

Poly currently has a 28 game Big West Conference games losing streak and you know they would love to get that monkey off their backs.

Poly will be very hungry and I'm sure they will bring a lot of energy and fight to the game. As DrMike noted, they have had their offensive struggles this year but they've also been quite competitive in many of their conference losses. They also took Oregon State to the limit in Corvallis when they lost to the Beavers in double OT.

Man, Poly has fallen on hard times in both football and basketball.

The 25 point loss to the Aggies was their worst loss of the year but they're capable of upsetting any team in the conference. 5 of their 10 conference losses have been by less than 10 points. They've been playing much better since they lost to us.

After reading that, it does make good sense to have a waiting period.

Huge 3 pointer by TY...HUGE!