UCSB Head Coach, Joe Pasternack, withdrew his name from consideration for the Cal job and has signed an extension at UCSB. There is speculation that he received a healthy raise and may have surpassed UCI's Russ Turner as the highest paid head coach in the Big West Conference. He was making $519K prior to signing the extension.

I haven't been able to find anything, Mike. Verbalcommits.com shows no current activity nor does 247 Sports. VC is showing that we have two current offers out:

Bowen Hammer 6'6 SF from Snow Canyon HS in St George, Utah. He also has offers from Southern Utah and Metro State.

Takai Hardy 6'7/200 PF from Sunrise Christian Academy in Fairfield, CA. He also has offers from Northern Arizona, Sac State, Cleveland State, Cal Poly, Montana, Montana State, Northern Illinois, Washington State, San Jose State and Chico State.

We are also the only team in the Big West that has not had a player enter the portal so far. VC is showing that there are currently 1175 players in the portal.

No complaints, Finn. I appreciate the time you take to keep the site up and running. I thought we were with tapatalk like the Big West Boards, and since they were down also, I just figured it was something going on on tapatalk's end.

Thanks for the update, Finn.

Isn't AST affiliated with tapatalk.com ? Are you able to contact anyone when the website goes down?

The Big West Boards is affiliated with tapatalk and I noticed that they were down at the same time as us but they came back online sooner.

I think the EP design is very cool. Well don Eli!

Stick with the Aggies and help the team get to the Big Dance next year!

Improvement! LMU was 11-10 coming into the game with the Ags including a win over Oklahoma State and Vanderbilt.

We're staying in Depoe Bay for 5 days in late April. We'll definitely try the Restaurant Beck. Thanks for the tip!

We have family in Newport so my wife and I may make the trip to Corvallis. Of course, our family in Newport are all OSU grads so we have to be careful!

Their AD sure seems to find sleepers. — agalum

They've had great success with Taylor in football and Campbell in women's basketball that's for sure. The problem is that they can't keep their most successful coaches. Fortunately, we don't seem to have that problem.

I was switching back and forth between games but I didn't see him playing in the second half. MS had a great season and he got to play in the tournament so he had a good experience playing with them.

It great to Caleb Fuller playing for Montana State against Kansas State. KS leads 24-28 at the half.

#16 Fairleigh Dickinson 63 #1 Purdue 58 - WOW!

This is perhaps the biggest upset ever in tournament history. FD only won 4 games last year and is the smallest team in D1 basketball and they just totally outplayed one of the tallest teams in D1 basketball and the overall #1 seed in the tournament. Never underestimate how much desire and heart plays in this game!

That's a good point.

The power programs are just so very deep too. They also have nearly all the best, athletic big men so their size and strength makes it very difficult for mid-major programs to match up with them. That size and strength advantage wears down the smaller teams as the game progresses and you could see that happening today. The Gauchos on managed 19 points in the second half and just couldn't stop the size and strength of Baylor.

36-35 Gauchos at the half in a great half of basketball. SB is executing beautifully on offense. They'll be in a position to win this game if they and tighten up the defense and get a few stops. Baylor is very athletic and they're tough to defend.

Definitely similar.

#14 UCSB and #3 Baylor is about to start at 10:30 on TNT. Tough draw for the Gauchos but anything can happen in March Madness.

Another big upset: #15 Princeton 59 #2 Arizona 55. Princeton finishes on a 9-0 run. Arizona averaged over 80 points per game this season. Defense and disciplined basketball wins it for Princeton.

Kihei Clark, the PG for Virginia who originally committed to the Aggies out of HS before switching to Virginia, unfortunately ended his college career on a sour note. #4 Virginia had a 2 point lead over #13 Furman with 12 seconds to go. Clark got trapped in the corner after inbounding the ball and tried to heave a long pass down the floor that was intercepted by a Furman player who passed the ball to JP Pegues who hit a 3 pointer with 2.2 seconds left. Virginia missed a long 3 at the buzzer and Paladins upset the Cavaliers 68-67.

Irvine goes one and done in the NIT losing to Oregon 84-58. The Anteaters had beaten Oregon in Eugene 69-56 way back on November 11th.

Terrible half of basketball by Irvine. Down 35-22 at the half. Oregon is without 3 of their top players but Irvine can't hit a shot. They are shooting 20% overall including 1-12 from 3.

The Irvine at Oregon NIT game is about to start at 8 pm on ESPN2.

So now our next games start conference play with 3 home games vs CSUN. The first game is scheduled for Friday at 2 pm.