According to DrMike, "New color man is Tom Abatemarco who is our general manager and long time coach."

The Aggies did a nice job of adjusting their play after a ragged start, especially on the defensive boards. I hope they can keep it up in the second half. This game is totally winnable. Coach Abatemarco is doing a better job this game. I like the way he speaks fro his coaching experience, but he uses too much jargon sometimes.

NCAA site shows the score to be 18-16 with 5:11 left in the half.

ESPN Gamecast no longer works.

ESPN Gamecast stilll works, score now 18-14.

Yes ESPN Video lost.

It always puzzled me how people can rely on past contests between teams (i.e NDSU is 3-1 vs, UC Davis) to predict a current matchup unless the previous game(s) were very recent. As it is, teams now change more than ever and even a previous season's results in no way suggest who will win today. This is not to say that I think the Aggies will win, but it is very hard to judge how good they are based on that first game.

It's clear that Nils is being more aggressive on offense. He looks for his shot a lot more than he did last year, but he's also playing smart, not forcing his shot. I wasn't able to keep track of who missed all those putbacks and layups against Menlo, but I don't think he had many of those.

Thanks. I seem to recall seeing posts of the audio of Coach Les, but it hasn't been a regular thing. I don't think I can access it independently of this site or can I?

I hope the Ags continue to hit 3s the way they did today. Six players hit at least one and the team combined for an NBA worthy 48%, which kind of compensated for all the missed layups. I don't know about the officiating, with 48 fouls called and 57 free throws attempted. Maybe the refs were trying out new whistles?

Yes, he got a cut under his left eye.

"Les won't like the 60% FT!" Especially that the starters are shooting 50%.

I'm hoping that Wilson will emerge as the high quality point guard we've gotten used to having. We sure could use T Y Johnson now. He must be turning over in his grave at all the dead bunnies.

I hope Bob Williams does the color for many of the games. Coach Abatemarco knows his stuff but he doesn't have the on air charisma as Coach Williams and his commentary is more incisive.

A pretty sloppy first half as might be expected for the first game of the season, with Aggies missing a lot of layups and putbacks. Nils Cooper looks very good, seems to have polished his game in the offseason. Menlo is giving us a tough game with Kai Brown and Jamaal Unuakahlu scoring 25 of the Oaks 34 points. They might be ahed if not for their 15 turnovers, many unforced.

Niko already has two blocks. He's also showing more offensive aggressiveness so far. During an interview at halftime of a football game he did say he was going to focus on that.

Three new starters. Only Niko and Sevilla starting.

:up:

I had posted this game earlier, so I was surprised to see this, but if you want to do this for the season, please go ahead.

I hoped the guys were no overconfident at the start of the game and now I wonder if that was a factor.