Though MBB, Football, and I guess MSOC are catching up I feel like WBB has quietly been the class of the UCD spectator sports for the last few years -- quality student-athletes, near the top of the conference in attendance, good academic ratings, home games against top programs, multiple postseason runs, and now finally consistent performance on the court.

Even then though, having the same recruiting class from a few years back produce four of the top players in the conference including possibly the top 2 overall is outright insanity.

Forgive my lack of experience, because I've never seen the fly before this year, but my understanding of it was that it has a secondary goal of spreading the defense out and forcing them to cover another option on each play. (Effectively making it the equivalent of the FB dive in the option offense -- the QB can hand it off at the start of any play so the D has to be aware of it at all times.)

In that regard I'm kind of witholding judgement on whether it's working out or not, because we can't exactly redo all the big plays that started with play action to the fly sweep guy to see how they would have worked out otherwise. I really should be looking at the defense during those plays but like DrMike said, that's hard in practice.

That being said I still wish we could break off a big run off the fly sweep at least a few times a game.

Usually he would be required but exceptions are granted for certain reasons, I think personal like sickness in the family but maybe others as well. Eddie Vanderdoes got his penalty waived when he signed with Notre Dame but enrolled at UCLA for example.

That was 2012 I'm pretty sure, the year we scored something like 7 on offense and 25 on special teams, including a defensive 2pt conversion.

I remember taking my girlfriend at the time to the game (pretty much her first game ever) and having to explain how it doesn't usually play out like this.

Some programmer is going to get a stern talking-to

I don't even know how you screw that up

Is the Wildcat something the coaches will avoid showing unless they feel it's the only way to get a short gain? I have to imagine it's a less-tape-in-existence-the-better deal

It occurred to me if Thomas was having fumble problems in practice it might largely explain the coaches' attitude towards using him (limited reps, often not in do-or-die situations, no comments on why he isn't getting more PT, etc.)

Clock management still bad

Instinct? Going for the return?

Bailed out the D from giving up 15 on the PI call though

Pretty sure Pluto always lags ~1 min behind Big Sky website. I try really hard not to check AST until commercial breaks because of that

Saying FBS will somehow let us compete against Cal/UCLA is disingenuous.

The only practical place for Davis is the MWC, which is the 7th best out of 10 FBS conferences. The best of the MWC, like Boise and SDSU, can compete with stronger teams in the Pac 12 (BSU taking WSU to overtime, SDSU beating Stanford) but that won't happen every year. Most of the time Pac 12 games will be set up as bodybag games just like they are now.

When it comes to scheduling, you're looking at 1-2 Power 5 games per year. Maybe one of them will be a home game, but even that's not guaranteed and I've heard that's kind of a last resort for P5 teams. The rest of your OoC games will be an FCS game (so at least there's still room for Sac!) and 1-2 games against random Group of 5 teams. You're also playing games on "me-too" platforms (CBS Sports Net, ESPN2/ESPNNews, Facebook) at like midnight East Coast time.

If Davis gets good enough such that MWC makes sense, then sure let's talk about moving. But there's nothing particularly glamorous about FBS, at least how UCD would experience it.


Also, side note -- it's entertaining to see the SDSU athletics center hyped up like that. It just feels like a normal office building when I'm on the academics floor.

Ags don't look half bad when the whole of FCS is considered. No losses outside the top 20 and no blowout losses outside the top 15.

FWIW San Diego is a few spots behind us at #46 and SDSU is behind only NDSU in the combined Sagarin rankings.

Pretty sure I've seen a draw or two. And it looks like they're only going to do direct snaps to Spencer, which they might as well due to the passing threat.

I voted "Coaches Choice" because TT still has a pretty small sample size. We don't get to see practices and don't know if he has fumble issues or something when he has more opportunities.

Sounds like they caught onto us. Though probably you can avoid it by browsing in a private window.

I wish SDSU had a bye this weekend instead of the travesty of last night :(

ESPN3 is produced by a Big West crew that doesn't travel out of SoCal.

The reason why we always get the ESPN2/U wildcard games is those are produced by a different ESPN crew, and ESPN is probably compensating for our lack of ESPN3 broadcasts a little.

That's my understanding from chatter on the Big West Boards anyway.

We may have started the push a tad early. We'd have to sustain this rate for almost 48 hours to win

There were several fakes as well. You can see a guy starting to run a sweep on the Doss 1-handed catch replay.

Then again I just assumed any sweep was part of the fly scheme, with no specific requirement on how the QB should move.

It's too early to panic. No student currently at UC Davis has any memory of Football being good (the current seniors saw 2, 2, and 3 DI wins per season) and two home blowouts over schools they've never heard of aren't going to reverse a bad image.

The vast disparity between student attendance last game and this game suggests to me that there was a marketing push for UND that we didn't have here -- perhaps because ICA felt they spent their "hype capital", or that they were worried about UCD getting blown out. But I'd expect higher student attendance for Homecoming at least and probably the Poly game.

Let's not forget that MBB and Soccer can fill the stands for big games and WBB often leads the conference in attendance.

There's an inherent advantage to the Wildcat because it's 11v11 vs 10v11 and defenses haven't prepared for it as much. All other things being equal I still would expect it to be better than say a power I in terms of obvious run formations