The Aggies take a 37-33 lead into halftime in a well played game by both teams. The Ags shot 52% overall and 50% from 3 with Moneke leading the way with 10 and TJ Shorts with 8. The ball movement by the Aggies has been much better this game so far.

This one was a struggle for quite a while and PSU closed to within one midway through the 3rd quarter. Then Ags started to get the ball into the interior of the zone for a few buckets and that started opening up the perimeter more and the Ags started knocking down their 3's. The lead grew to 18 at 79-61 before the Vikings finished with a 6-0 run.

This a nice win for the Aggies but they need to come out and start the game with more energy on both ends of the floor than they did tonight. They seemed a little flat in the first quarter. They were not really attacking the Vikings zone much in the first half and seemed content to pass the ball around the perimeter. They were trying get the ball to Bertsch but early on she missing shots she normally makes.

I think Jen Gross would like to see her team cut down on the soft passes that are getting tipped and stolen also. The Ags need to pass crisply with a purpose and not hesitant with a soft lob.

PSU had some good outside shooters and they had good ball movement. The Ags play with confidence and maturity though. They seem to know that at some point they'll get it in gear a make a good run and create some separation.

The Aggies won the game from behind the arc canning 15 0f 28 for 54% to PSU's 9 0f 22 for 41%. Morgan Bertsch and Rachel Nagel led the Ags with 20 apiece.

The Ags travel to Pacific for a 7 pm game on Monday evening.

Go Ags!

The Aggies manage to stretch the lead a little 57-45 at the end of the 3rd quarter after the Vikings had it down to one point.

That was probably the worst call I've ever seen in a Causeway Classic and it stopped the Aggies final drive dead in its tracks when the Ags were moving down the field. It was hard to believe that the side judge missed that call because it really wasn't close. Carter clearly made a remarkable catch in control and inbounds. As calm a demeanor that Coach Biggs had, he was furious.

No one on either side wants to see the game dramatically influenced by a obvious missed call and that one was as egregious as it gets.

34-27 Aggies at the half. They played much better defense in the 2nd quarter and, as a result, the Vikings FG shooting cooled off to 36% for the half. The Aggies are struggling a bit with the Vikings 2-3 zone and shot 38% for the half.

The Aggies started off cold and shot just 31% in the first quarter and allowed PSU to shoot 70%.

Awesome program!

He redshirted his sophomore year due to an ankle injury.

The Causeway game could very well be the last time we see Doss in an Aggie uniform. He is set to graduate in May but has one year of eligibility left but he says he will wait and see how the NFL draft goes before he makes a decision to leave or play one more year. It also sounds like the NFL scouts are very impressed with him so he may get a nice deal in the draft.

Playing decent mid-majors on the road is challenging in my opinion. We are obviously not able to get high mid-majors and power conference schools to come to Davis. Road games against just about anyone are always tough and can be especially tough when you travel to places like UNC and Seattle etc where the arenas are practically empty for the home team and there are only a handful of Aggie fans in the seats. The players just have to play for each other as a team in those situations and the empty environment makes it even tougher.

The curious thing about this game is that you would think that the Ags were playing well when they got up by 17 at the midway point of the second half. But, it was more because Pacific was ice cold and they were turning the ball over about as much as the Ags were. Aggie passes were sailing into the stands, guys were dribbling off their feet and dribbling into double and triple teams and getting tied up. It was ugly for both teams.

We have to have more offensive balance or we will not have a good season. Chima and Siler can not carry this team offensively all season long. Mooney has shown that he can shoot but our offensive schemes are not creating many open looks from the perimeter and it doesn't appear that we have shooters who can confidently create open looks off the dribble by themselves. So our offense is going to have to create openings for the shooters off high screens and kicking the ball out off dribble penetration. TJ Shorts had a nice game at UNC and I think we'll continue to see him get better as the season progresses.

As you said, we seem to be very thin when comes to help from the bench. It appears that AJ John is going to be the first big off the bench so I hope he'll continue to improve with playing time and Mooney is capable of being a big scorer when he's feeling it. After that though, the few other bench players we've seen have not looked comfortable at all on the floor. It's early but that's a big area of concern right now.

Everyone knows that Les preaches defense first and foremost and I think he recruits for players that he feels have a very high work ethic on defense. We haven't seen him bring in much elite offensive firepower outside of the Hawkins' era group with the exceptions being Chima, Siler and Brynton Lemar for the most part. He produced a winner with last year with that philosophy so what do I know!

Last year's non-conference schedule was awful also. I expected this year's schedule to be better since we got a lot of publicity from being in the NCAA Tournament and winning a game.

Coach Les has said a couple of things in regards to the non-conference schedule: 1) He says it's just really hard to get teams to come here an play us and 2) he has said that he is willing to play a lot of non-conference away games since he believes that it brings the players together and teaches them to play through adversity.

From a fan's perspective, the non-conference schedule leaves a lot to be desired.

Basketball can be a beautiful game and this was not one of them. The Ags had 20 TO's and Pacific had 16 and Pacific had 14 steals while the Ags had 7. Both teams capitalized on the sloppy ball handling; UOP scored 23 points off TO's and the Ags scored 20. There were stretches in which it was hard to tell which team could play worse on offense.

Les builds his teams around defense but you can't win on just defense alone and right now the Aggie offense is a constant struggle. I love the way this team works on defense but Heaven help us on offense if Chima gets in early foul trouble and has to sit. Siler is a great shooter but our offensive sets are not creating many open looks for him. We don't seem to have anyone who can confidently create an open perimeter shot off the dribble one on one and, for whatever reason, we are not penetrating and kicking the ball out for an open perimeter look very often either.

We shot a decent 51% but only put up 41 shots because we turned the ball over so often. Pacific also helped us out by shooting a dreadful 14 of 24 from the line and some of those were the front ends of one and ones. The Tigers manhandled us on the offensive boards 14-4 which led to them getting 32 points in the paint. These kind of stats tell me that we were very fortunate to win.

Yes, I'll take the win for sure but this game showed me that this team has got some serious work to do.

That was an odd half of basketball. The Ags committed 10 TO's and didn't ever seem to get into an offensive flow yet two 3's by Chima and one by John briefly gave the Ags a 9 point lead before Pacific got a bucket at the buzzer.

Chima has 15 and Siler has 9. We really need some offensive production from some of the rest of the team.

Ugly first 4 minutes for the Aggies. No offensive flow and TO's. Lucky to be down only 2-0.

i had it wrong in the thread title and corrected it.

Vegas has the Ags as 4 point underdogs. I've always liked being an underdog in rivalry games.

Go Ags!

Here's how the Big West has done so far this season:

Big West overall: 11-5
and 8-5 vs D1 competition

vs. Big Sky: 2-0
vs. MWC: 0-1
vs. Pacific-12: 1-3
vs. SWAC: 1-0
vs. Summit: 2-1
vs. Sun Belt: 1-0
vs. WCC: 1-0

home: 7-0 (3-0 vs. D1)
away: 4-5

Did any of our new bigs look very promising from what you saw in the Bethesda game? It looks like Jackson may work himself into some PT this year. Do you think Strom will be redshirted?