Watching the SDSU/Sac game and Sac has 14 (!!!!) at the half

They look like a very sloppy basketball team, but maybe the late tip-off and SDSU's size are getting to them.

You beat me to it. I've seen a fair share of football, basketball, and soccer games and this feels like the first time I'm seeing a major Aggie team put just plain better players on the floor than the opponents. The revenue sports have had individual stars in the last few years and have excelled in specific areas, but I can't recall any team having such a big talent advantage across so many positions.

The cool part is how this is sustainable -- a team built around Bertsch, Hall, Bessolo, and the Eatons could conceivably win the Big West next year. And who knows what kind of talent is waiting in the wings.

My irrational fantasy for the future of MBB is that the Ags get popular and reputable enough that the Golden 1 Center is actually necessary for marquee OoC games due to capacity concerns at the Pavilion. Won't ever happen regularly but I could see it happening maybe once if the program keeps improving and someone like Gonzaga comes to town.

Really is annoying that a team with two undefeated home records in the last three years can't consistently draw even 3000. I'm sure there will be a boost this year for casual fans and season tickets but something has to be done to get the students to turn up.

I think the Ags win tonight but it will be close and anything can happen in a rivalry. Other players have to step up because Chima can't carry the offense every game. (Relatedly, isn't that what happened to UCSB the year we won the regular season? I remember reading that Alan Williams had the flu or something.) Won't be able to even listen but hopefully I can check the halftime score.

No question we improved. But there was pretty much nowhere to go but up.

We're partly just seeing regression to the mean. The last three years of Gould were probably an underperformance -- swaths of injuries to key players don't help, and last year we literally gave a game away when a return guy unnecessarily fielded a punt -- so the likeliest thing regardless of the staff was some improvement by a win or two. Maybe we can credit the staff for not hindering that improvement.

100% the better team won yesterday imo. As Riveraggie said, the game was lost when y'all got 31 points ahead.

It's nice to wonder if we could have pulled out some miracle, but really doesn't change the big issue

Actually I watched that with hs friends once; it was plenty entertaining at least

Real Steel is my flick for tonight. Too bummed and tired to go to the SDSU game.

I agree, the offense is an improvement, both in stats and style. It's much more fun to watch than previously, or at least the peaks are. I guess that's good for recruiting, attendance, and donations, but I'd rather take more Ws running the option or something if it came down such a decision.

The youth is a good point. It'll be interesting to see how everyone develops and how the staff fills in gaps when given more time to recruit into the new system. TT's underutilization is something I guess maybe I could've included in my list of ah, grievances, but we don't really know how all these guys compare in practice.

My vibe looking at the whole thing is that this is a team that had the ability to get around 7 wins that got 5. By the numbers that's an improvement and maybe we'll grow a bit but I really don't care for being a potential 8-win team that consistently gets 5 or 6 (we won't always have such a favorable schedule). And that's the path I see right now which is why I'm frustrated.

Ok good effort to hang in there by the Aggies, but man that was a costly false start.

Five wins isn't a catastrophe but it sure looks like an underperformance to me. The "how" we got to five matters a lot. We beat the five weakest teams in our schedule. Most of the losses were pretty bad -- pretty much all the FCS losses except EWU and now Sac -- and there have been moments that really reflected inadequate coaching (bad special teams miscues, weirdly inconsistent playcalling, unpreparedness for 2-minute drill, etc).

We know we're not going to have the best talent at every position. But this team has smart players and an experienced staff so I expect the preparation, game-time decision making, and execution to be near perfect every single game without fail. Any less means the team is set up to fail against bigger, faster opponents in the conference.

I get to see a pretty good FBS team play week after week and to my untrained eye, I just don't see the inconsistency and sloppiness that Davis has. Talent and funding discrepancies are acceptable and expected but not preparedness and execution levels.

Hornets get the stop, just have to take a knee

Had an essay prepared but I'll wait. Come on Ags

And Doss is the best receiver in the country, or close enough for our purposes. And Maier is a top-10 QB. And... etc. There are too many stars aligning this season to justify 5 wins, or maybe even 6. We're not going to have talent and experience like this on the staff and roster every year.

I am very pessimistic about the future of this program right now, I'm not going to lie.

Turning this game off. If we lose this we'll have fewer wins against scholarship programs than Gould's first season and no Causeway trophy to show for the year.

This is not what a good program looks like.

Coming out flat again...

What happens if someone like Doss who's on track to graduate gets drafted in winter? (On the quarter system no less, which goes later.) Is he allowed to finish or does he have to report to the team immediately?

2012 was not the downpour of legend, though I think it did drizzle slightly. That was the weird game where the Ags stayed in it with only one offensive TD but had almost every variation of a special teams score

17-15 Aggies at then end of the 1st

The DE said Morgan, Rachel, and Pele have dubbed themselves the Splash Sisters. Somewhat bold talk but they do have the numbers and record to back it up.

I feel like we're in for another chippy game -- 32 fouls in a game speaks to very aggressive tactics and I bet PSU will be applying a lot of pressure to try to stop the offense from clicking. Sounds like PSU is also somewhat deep if they can make it to OT with four players fouling out.

Oh I don't deny all that; see my caution/pessimism in other threads. This team has a lot to work on. But in regards to the original point about the offense being able to produce an upset, that was a game where the offense did its job

We were a missed field goal away from taking EWU to overtime at home, and I like our chances of competing in that situation because the CJ Wildcat Special is as close to a guaranteed 2pt conversion that I can think of.

So that's our "upset" as far as I'm concerned, in that the offense largely did what it had to do to keep us in the game with an explosive team.

Michael also has the obscure distinction of being the only player left on the roster who saw minutes in the Hawkins era. He's probably had a ton of reps defending some top-notch players in practice throughout the years so it's gratifying to see it play dividends.