Ags brought their energy to Hawaii and lead 31-24 at the half. Great hustle and rebounding by the Aggies.

Just turned this on. A little surprised to see the Ags up by so much over the Rainbow Wahine.

The Ags stretched the lead to 14 midway through the 3rd quarter and then they started turning the ball over again and again and again. 41-37 Ags heading into the 4th.

Turnovers: 14 Ags, 4 Wahine. 1 point game.

And... I'm no longer surprised.

Literally giving this game away.

Ags fall 57-50. The Aggies had a 13 point lead, 40-27, midway through the 3rd quarter. Then they started turning the ball over like they have all season and got outscored 30-10 in the final 15 minutes of the game...another demoralizing loss for the Ags...

So obviously TOs are a continuing issue, but boy were there a lot of poor in-game decision, and I'm going to guess that most those (at least last night) come from being tired. Four of our starters were well over 30 mins, with Burns at 25 mins. The bench was Harris and Svanholm at 15 and 14mins and that's about it. Hawaii only had one player right at 30 mins, and 9 players at 15 or more minutes. I know coach Gross wants to keep her starters in as much as possible, but it certainly looked like Hawaii was the fresher and more energetic team in the 4th quarter. Let's see 10 mins from Shine, Gray, Langi, and Sanders (of course, I don't know the health of everyone, so that might be a factor, but we've seen Coach Gross lean heavily on her starters throughout the year).

Four games in a week, plus a long plane trip, can't help either.

On the positive side (you know me), another good rebounding game, including on the offensive side.

Onward and upward!

No doubt that fatigue was a factor in this game. Gross was livid in the 4th quarter as the game got very physical and I think she felt like we were pretty much getting pushed around hard and the refs were letting it go. The Hawaii coach was working the refs constantly and it appeared to pay off for her. Both the men's and women's games against Hawaii always seem to get very physical and chippy.

The only reason I can think of that Jen relies on her starters so much is that she feels like we really fall off after Svanholm on the bench. The team has struggled in a number of areas this year including TO's and long stretches of ice cold shooting which seems to happen once they start turning the ball over frequently. Our 3 point shooting has fallen off too and we are launching a lot of them. We're also missing the outstanding, veteran play at PG that we've had in the past few years with the twins and Trpcic. Those great PG's were the glue that held the team together and directed traffic when the games were tight and we've missed that this year. Our current PG's are still developing.

The players looked dejected when the game ended last night especially Turner who quickly headed to to locker room. She's so competitive like Hall and I think she's frustrated right now with all of these losses. I think the entire team and the coaches are feeling the pressure and some disappointment with the way the season is going. The Ags were overwhelming picked to win their 6th BW title in a row and it isn't happening which has to be tough on everyone.

I'm hoping that Jen will elect to play the bench more. We're not going to win the conference but if we want to win the tournament we'll need to rest our starters more than we have to this point. I suspect we'll be in the "play-in" portion. So the team needs to win 4 straight in 5 days. We need more of a contribution from the bench to make that happen. And we need to stop tossing the ball away. Argh! the TOs are killing us.