Like Oldbanduhalum says, "He has definitely earned playing time." He's stuck it out and is always full of energy and willing to contribute in whatever role Les has asked of him. He's truly a team player.
.

Nice summary Oldbanduhalum.

I was worried while watching the first half. Chima was carrying the team and keeping us close. We were getting hammered on the boards and we were not getting much offensive production from anyone else. It was really nice to see Shorts and Mooney step up in the second half. Shorts also had 4 steals.

To be successful this year we have to get some solid offensive production from players other than Chima. Teams are going to try and make things very tough for him. UNC committed a flagrant 1 on him and I expect teams will try to be very physical with him to try and slow him down.

The Bears did a good job of bottling up Schneider most of the game. He's an ultimate competitor though and, as usual, he battled back and hit some crucial shots. Onybalu has won a starting role and, although he doesn't score much, I think his athleticism and defense will get him quite a bit of PT. Garrison Goode is a defender first but he also showed signs that his offensive game is a little better this year. His FT stroke is vastly improved. When he first arrived in Davis he had one of the most awkward looking FT shots I've ever seen and he was miserable from the line. His FT stroke against UNC looked pretty darn good so it's evident that he has really worked on it.

As you noted, AJ John, Printup and Jackson did not look that comfortable out there. John had 4 fouls in only 8 minutes of PT. We'll need some productive contributions from the bench to give us some depth as the season progresses.

I'm excited to see how we do at Pacific.

Go Ags!

What...thanks wild...!!!

Good catch. The tv announcer didn't know what Les was getting worked up about. Glad the the Aggie bench was on top of the score. In a close game those 2 points could have ben the difference between winning and losing.

Wow...good for him. He's playing for Las Posiitas CC in Livermore this year.

The Ags got off to a pretty ragged looking start and Chima managed to keep us within striking distance at the half. I think that was to be expected with 8 new players in an Aggie uniform for the very first time.

The Bears burned the Aggies from 3 and to it to them on the boards in the first half. It was different story in the second half as the Ags held the Bears to 0-11 from downtown and, after getting out rebounded by 10 in the first, the Ags won the battle of the boards by 6 in the second half.

Chima carried the team offensively until TJ Shorts, Joe Mooney and Siler Schneider got it going in the second half. Chima finished with 28 points and 8 boards and Mooney scored 14 on 5-5 shooting and TJ Shorts dropped in 15. Siler was bottled up most of the night but when he did get open he canned the shot. Siler scored 10 points on 4-7 shooting from the floor.

The Ags won this game first and foremost with their defense and forced the Bears into 16 TO's while committing only 9 themselves. Defensively the Aggies played with good energy and kept battling even though they trailed until about 13 minutes to go in the game. Chima mentioned after the game that the altitude in Greeley had the team pretty gassed late in the game but they pushed through it for the win.

This is an interesting team with a lot of new pieces that will take some time to come together. Tonight was a very nice start.

Nice win coming back from 8 down with 13 minutes to go to win pulling away 72-59.

The first 10 minutes were pretty ragged and Coach Les was trying a lot of different combinations of players. Chima kept us close early with 13 and, after picking up his 2nd personal, TJ Shorts and Joe Mooney contributed 7 each.

The difference in the game so far is that over half of the Bears 12 FG's were 3 pointers on 6-12 from downtown. The Ags were only 1-3 from behind the arc. The Aggie defense looked pretty good and forced 11 TO's but got manhandled on the boards 17-7 of which UNC had 7 offensive boards.

UNC 35 Aggies 32 at the half.

The Big Sky TV link above is the feed from Pluto TV also but you are just watching online from the Big Sky TV website. Otherwise, if you have a smart tv, you should be able to download the app directly to your tv app lineup. If you have Amazon Prime or Roku or Apple TV etc, you can download the app to your tv directly from those sources as well. Hope that helps.

We haven't seen anymore of that so, hopefully, that's been handled by Hawk.

I don't think we'll be flat again.

I expect that Sac will draw a pretty good crowd for this game considering this is their best chance for the playoffs in many years. They have a very athletic QB who is similar to SUU's Tyler. He has the ability to make something out of nothing with his legs and he is an accurate passer. As usual, Sac will be very athletic with good speed and quickness.

We need to play smarter than Sac and not get caught up in their trash talk which will most definitely happen in a game like this. Let them shoot themselves in the foot like they often do against us.

That's a surprise to me. Granted, we lost a lot of players from last year's championship team but the Bears were 11-18 overall last season and 7-11 in the Big Sky which is a weak basketball conference in comparison with the Big West. I think Coach Les should post the 7 point underdog statement on the locker room wall before the game!

Targeting is a very tough call to get consistently right and I support the efforts to protect the players and make the game a bit safer. It seems to me that, with all the concerning research about CTE, that the officials have been directed to throw the flag on any questionable hits and then review the play afterwards if there if any doubt at all. The rule favors erroring on the side of safety.

I didn't see our player's arms up high from where I was sitting. It just looked like a bang-bang play and the Aggie defender just reacted in an almost protective manner.

I've seen a lot of targeting calls where the ball carrier lowers his head when the defender is coming in low and they collide helmet to helmet and the defender then gets flagged for targeting. That's a rough call on the defender!

Hahahaha!

I thought the targeting call was wrong and it was a clean play. Who was the player that got ejected? Will he be out for the Sac game?

I think you meant "majors," Russ...and it is a great idea!

I'm sure that the marketing can be more focused and improved but I'm worried that the problem goes much deeper. I think the Aggie fan culture has changed over the years since we went to D1.

UCD is rightfully known more for its academics than its athletics. The student body is huge but it is made up of mostly very scholarly students who grew up in the digital age. These students were studious in high school and most likely they were not that much interested in their high school's sports.

High school sports used to be the center of high school social activity and that is not the case anymore. Kids today have their digital devices, all sorts of social media to participate in, immersive video games and addictive cable TV series to binge on with their friends. If you didn't grow up a sports fan, you are not going to become one at college when there are so many other innovative digital things to do in between studying.

I've got nothing against "nerds," in fact, I love them and most "nerds" could give a hoot about college and pro sports. When you look around Aggie Stadium you see a lot of folks in the older generation and some families with young kids...not a lot of students.

Then there's all the concerns about CTE and the number of injuries in football and the huge financial cost of the sport. Football participation has declined among youth and high school athletics except perhaps in the deep south where it rivals religion.

Davis is a progressive and informed community and I think, that even though the population of Davis has increased dramatically recently, there is a lot less interest in Aggie football in the community than there was in the D2 days. I think the majority of Davis families see football as just too dangerous.

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, I love the game, but I think the times have changed and football, especially at our level, faces some really big hurdles in a university town like Davis.

This was a hard fought win over a very athletic Pepperdine team. The Ags started off hitting their first 4 shots and led 10-0 only a minute and a half into the game. They quickly cooled off though and and got out hustled on the defensive boards and the Waves came back to within one. The Ags built the lead up as many as 11 points in the 2nd half but couldn't shake the scrappy Waves.

Pepperdine was crashing the boards and getting a lot of offensive rebounds and 2nd chance points. They out rebounded the Aggies 45-37 overall and had 18 offensive boards that led to 18 2nd chance points. The Waves also played hard-nosed defense and the Ags were not getting a lot of open looks from 3. The Ags hit only 5 of 16 for the game after going 17 of 32 against Washington State.

Jen Gross saw that the Ags needed some more quickness and length on the floor to slow down the offensive rebounding of the Waves so she brought in Nina Bessolo and Cierra Hall and they contributed a combined 13 points and 9 rebounds in 13 minutes of PT each.

The star of the game though was Morgan Bertsch. Pepperdine was taking away the shots behind the arc so the Ags went inside to Bertsch and she responded with a monster game. She scored 27 points on 13 of 18 from the floor and 1-3 from the line. Her lightening quick spin moves in the paint are practically impossible to stop. She became only the 4th Aggie junior to reach 1,000 career points joining Carol Rische, Sydnee Fipps, and Ellen Porshneva.

Rachel Nagel had another stellar game also. She contributed 14 points on 5-8 shooting overall and 3 of 4 from the line.

If this team has a Achilles heel it may be rebounding especially on the defensive boards. Pepperdine was just getting too many offensive boards and 50/50 balls being batted around in the paint. To the Aggies credit though, they adjusted to not getting many open 3 point looks, went inside and outscored the Waves 40-28 in the paint. Good teams adjust and find ways to win and the Ags did that today. Great coaching and effort by the Aggies!

That was a sloppy first quarter for the Aggies. They turned the ball over and got out hustled on the boards.