That's formula for success and, surprise, surprise, it works with the selection committee...

Sac will have a bone to pick when they go to Idaho...

The Aggie players and coaches are always so impressive in these press conferences. Aggie athletics is a perfect example of a college athletics program where the athletes are truly required to be good students first. College athletics as it should be!

FCS Coaches Poll Week 3 (click the image to enlarge):

Big Sky Teams:

#3 Montana State
#4 Sac State
#8 Weber State
#10 Idaho
#11 Montana
#15 Aggies
#29 EWU



https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/football/fcs/fcs-coaches-poll

SUU Head Coach DeLane Fitzgerald:

"Our offense slept-walked through the first 40 minutes of the game and after that, we decided we were going to play hard and do some things well… These young men are playing hard but just not doing enough to get the win, and I have said that more than I want to this season. "

"I thought we were tight and flat on offense but we played really well on defense and we put our defense in some tough situations and they stepped up."

"We need to execute and play a little more freely on offense, defense, and special teams."

"Our goals for this season are still in play, we can still go undefeated at home and if we can beat all of the teams from the former WAC conference then we can still have a chance to win the conference and play for a playoff spot."

https://suutbirds.com/news/2023/9/17/football-spectacular-southern-utah-comeback-falls-just-short-aggies-edge-t-birds-23-21-in-thrilling-california-clash.aspx

:lol: You've got a lot of company!

I think, more than any game so far this year, this game will tell us a lot about where we stand in relation to the top teams in the Big Sky.

That call was so bad that it's burned into the memory of every Aggie fan who saw it happen...ended the game for us against our arch rival...

I was thinking some more about the two big, missed calls by the refs that actually had a big impact on the game: the no call on the obvious PI deep in SUU territory in the first half right in front of the side judge and the missed face mask call when SUU's Wooden whipped Rex Connors to the ground on their 66 yard TD late in the game. Luckily, we managed to squeak by with a 2 point win. I know stuff gets missed in every game and that's just part of the game that teams just have to roll with but those two missed calls were so obvious that it hard to see how they got missed. I wonder why Hawk didn't use a challenge on either of those plays?

Is there any form of performance review for the Big Sky refs so they can see where they made mistakes and, hopefully, not repeat them again in future games?

Great photo!



https://www.facebook.com/ucdavisfootball

It is surprising how many plays the “backups” are in on defense when the game is still undecided. — Riveraggie

That tells me that they believe that we've got a lot of good depth at those positions and it gives the "starters" a respite and helps keep them fresh.

AGS Poll Week 3:

Big Sky Teams:

#3 Montana State
#5 Sac State
#6 Idaho
#12 Weber State
#13 Montana
#15 Aggies
#29 Tie EWU




https://www.anygivensaturday.com/showthread.php?339635-AGS-Poll-Results-2023-Wk3

Ags move up one place in the STATS Perform FCS Poll (click to enlarge the image).

Big Sky Teams:

#3 Montana State
#4 Sac State
#7 Idaho
#10 Weber State
#13 Montana
#15 Aggies
#28 EWU



Others Receiving Votes (schools listed on two or more ballots): UT Martin 96; Southeastern Louisiana 72; Eastern Washington 68; Northern Iowa 57;Central Arkansas 50; Fordham 37; Campbell 33; Abilene Christian 30; UAlbany 19; Tennessee State 11; Gardner-Webb 8; Tarleton State 8; Austin Peay 6; Eastern Illinois 4; Harvard 2; Stephen F. Austin 2

https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/football/fcs/stats-perform-fcs-top-25

Oh geez, I'd forgotten that! Damn, we need this one really bad!!

The SUU and Aggie defenses were practically mirror images of each other on Saturday night as they both slammed the door on the running game of the opponent. SUU's D was aggressive and fast. I was impressed with how fast they closed on the ball carrier when we tried to run wide and we were getting stuffed up the middle and off tackle as well. I think that, overall, SUU is just a whole lot better than they're being given credit for. I hope we'll be able to get a better OL push against EWU but, from what we saw against SUU, it's questionable whether or not that will happen.

This is a huge game for the Aggies. We need to get off to a good start in conference play and not put ourselves in the position of being on the bubble for the playoffs. I think there is a "bias factor" by the selection committee when it comes to the likes of Montana and other far north Big Sky teams vying for a playoff spot so we need to simply be in a position where they can't overlook us period.

EWU has had our number for quite a few years also and has certainly squashed our playoff hopes on a couple of occasions. There's not a lot of love loss between these two programs either given how Best likes to run up the score if he has a chance and he's done that to the Aggies in the past. Time for us to get that bitter taste out of our mouths.

Kind of a bummer that he left. I thought he was going to be a promising player for us. Hard to know why...could be a playing time thing but I wonder if academics might have been a problem since he transferred to a JC and not another 4 year school? Who knows, playing athletics at Davis is a tough balancing act between the sport and the academics though.