They have a much worse fan support problem than we do right now. This is one of their best teams of the D1 era and there's not much interest around Sacramento.

There's a big vacuum when it comes to D1 college sports in the greater Sacramento area. If either school was ever able to begin competing with the likes of the bigger name schools in the west on a consistent basis, the sports hungry fans in the area would eat it up. I hope that will be the Aggies in due time.

We haven't seen much from our new big guys so far this season though. I'm hoping that we get some production from Russell, John, Underwood or Strom. Somebody will have to set up if Chima gets in foul trouble and when he needs a blow.

I watched part of Riverside's win over Cal and they looked impressive. The Big West is off to a nice start so far this season. League is shaping up to be a real dog fight.

Hahaha...80-80...toughest loss ever!

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.
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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!