There had been hope that the strength of the Aggie schedule, plus close losses to No. 1 South Dakota State (24-22) and No. 2 Sacramento State (27-21) would sway the selection committee despite UCD’s 6-5 overall record.

Alas, it wasn’t to be.

And while I can make a case for a 6-5 team not getting into the playoff, it’s hard to imagine how both Idaho and Montana did make it into the final field over this 6-5 Aggie team.

In the next-to-last game of the season, the Aggies traveled to Moscow and drilled No. 15 Idaho, 44-26. UCD led, 31-7, at halftime and never looked back. You would think that late-season head-to-head matchups, especially one as lopsided as this one, would weigh heavily in the selection committee’s judgment.

Montana, meanwhile, limped to the finish line, losing four of its last six games, including a 30-23 setback to Idaho and a final game 55-21 shellacking by Montana State. Indeed, the much-hyped Brawl of the Wild turned into the Maul of the Wild.

Worse yet, the Griz finished 4-4 and sixth in the Big Sky Conference, while the Aggies were 5-3 and in fifth place. Again, you would think conference standings would weigh heavily in the selection committee’s judgment, especially with a team that failed to break .500 in the Big Sky and finished halfway down the league standings.

Montana and the Aggies had six common opponents. Montana was 2-4 against those six, while the Aggies were 3-3. Once again, what criteria could the committee be using if not this?

https://www.aggiesportstalk.com/discussion/1991/2022-fcs-playoffs

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Good point. I just took a look at their roster:

13 transfers from other 4 year programs including 4 from power conferences.
16 JC transfers

Taylor really went heavy into transfers! Wow!

https://hornetsports.com/sports/football/roster?path=football

Great, thoughtful post, Kerberos. Thanks for taking the time write it up and share it with us here on AST. Also, Nick Amoah was the Aggie player in the presser who said the Davis was the only D1 school he got an offer from that would allow him to be an engineering major and play football as well.

I agree with you that Hawkins is a great fit for the Aggies. He bleeds Aggie Pride and the "Aggie Way" of combining athletics and academics. He also continues our amazing history having produced so many great collegiate and pro coaches over the years.

The thing that jumps out to me every time I look at it, however, is the stunning, overall success of Troy Taylor in just 3 years at Sac State. What he has done over there in that short period of time is practically unimaginable. He took over one of the weakest programs in the Big Sky and promptly won or shared 3 straight Big Sky titles while going 29-7 overall and 23-1 in league play to date and has Sac State in a position to play for a possible undefeated, national championship. He has accomplished what we have been chasing ever since we moved to D1 and he's done it in just 3 years.

What I would like to know more about is how Taylor managed to accomplish this in such a short period of time? I ask this not as criticism of our program or Hawkins but out of a curiosity as to how he has been so successful so fast .

I know we have higher academic requirements which limits the pool size of the athletes that we can recruit but is that that big of an advantage for him? Many other schools nation wide and schools in the Big Sky have similar or perhaps even less stringent academics requirements and haven't had that kind of success so fast. Is he just a gifted coach with a superior offensive mind? Are there other possible factors that anyone can identify that has attributed to the meteoric success he has had with the Sac State program?

Montana not only got in with a home game, they got a nationally televised ESPN2 game to boot.

Delaware lost 4 of their last 6 games and got selected with a home game as too. The selection committee says they take into account how a team is currently playing as well...yeah right!

Playing in Texas is always going to be tough no matter who we are playing.

Milwaukee is now 2-3 after losing today to St Thomas (MN) 74-72. St Thomas (Summit League) is now 5-2.

The Aggies out rebounded Sac 37-29 including a 15-5 advantage in the second half. This is the first time Sac was beaten on the boards this season.

Interesting note: This was the 120th game between these two schools with Sac leading the all-time series 69-51 since the first game in 1948.

I was thinking the same thing.

Only 4 of the 15 selected are seniors: Gilliam, Amoah, Pettek, King and Gomez.

I went to the Milwaukee Men's Basketball website and looked at their schedule. All the info is shown on their schedule.

https://mkepanthers.com/sports/mens-basketball

There's a lot to work on and I think we're going to take our lumps for a while. The ball movement and offensive flow was largely missing for the majority of the game especially in the first half. We also had quite a few opportunities close to the basket where we simply blew the layup with a wild shot after getting to the rim.

Sac did a good job of taking away the our 3 point looks too. That's Turner's bread and butter and she didn't get many clean looks the whole game. We can expect that team's will focus on making things tough for Turner in every game going forward.

Yes, we're going to have difficulty with teams who have interior size and physicality. Norris was trying hard to be physical with Sac's 6'5 post but just isn't strong and experienced enough yet to defend that kind of size. Not having Svanholm hurts. She's isn't as physical as Stobbarts was but, at 6'6, her length presents a problem for teams.

Post-game quotes:

Regarding Evanne Turner:

“Instead of sitting in the locker room feeling bad about ourselves, she’s saying ‘hey, let’s everybody say one thing that we’re going to commit to getting better,'” Gross said. “It turns it into ‘alright we’re on a mission here’ and that’s important to our team, and that’s got to be what we do from now until March.”

“My teammates and the coaching staff believe in me to make sure that I get to the rim,” Turner said. “They put me in a position to score, and I think it’s just been a mentality that I continue that I go here at Davis is that we’re going to get the job done, I’m going to get the job done because I have so much belief in me.”

Added Gross, “She’s the one everybody wants to play with because she’s so much fun. She brings such an amazing joy to the court whenever she steps on it, and yet, she’s also the fiercest competitor I’ve ever coached. The passion shows up in so many ways. We’ve had some great leaders over the last couple of years, so to see her step into a role now where this is her team. She’s taken ownership on that, finding ways to connect with each and every person on the team to say ‘hey, come with me on this, let’s go.’ She has a lot of weight on her shoulders.”

Other quotes:

“Obviously, not our day today,” Gross said. “We’re all disappointed with the outcome.”

“Sac State is a good team,” Gross said. “Going into this game, we knew that. We knew that they had some weapons that were going to be tough for us, and they played a very good game. They shot the ball well. They executed. So, congrats to them.”

“We’re a young team,” Gross said. “We’re a team that has a lot of new pieces. We said from Day 1: our goal is, regardless of the outcome of any one particular game, we’re just going to continue to get better and better and better. I think that’s what I love about this team, our binds are really strong.”

“Jenn and UC Davis are a phenomenal program and have been for a long time,” Campbell said of his opposite number. “The utmost respect for them. Our program has a lot of respect for them. This was a big game for us. Tonight, we caught up to those guys.”

https://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/basketball-ucd-women-cant-catch-up-with-hornets/

“I challenged our guys to ramp up their defense and their physicality in the second half,” said Aggie head coach Jim Les.

“I thought we were a little soft on defense in the first half and were rushing our shots, but give Sac State credit, they were playing really well. But our group really responded in the second half. Sac State had us on our heels, but we were really resilient to come back like that. Our intensity ramped up, our physicality ramped up and we were really going after rebounds. When you do things like that, not surprisingly, the ball starts going in the basket.”

https://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/basketball-aggie-men-ramp-up-defense-to-silence-hornets/

The Aggie defense forced 19 Hornet TO's. Defense was the big difference tonight.

The Ags will be actually be playing 3 games in 3 days in Milwaukee during the Cream City Classic. Milwaukee is our first game on Saturday and then we play Southeast Missouri State on Sunday and Boston University on Monday. I expect the game against Milwaukee will be tough. Basketball is a big deal in the Midwest and a lot of these smaller schools field very good teams.

First win by the Hornets since 2015 and this was also the lowest number of points by an Aggie team in a game against Sac since 2008.

It was really disappointing to watch. They can't just depend upon Turner to provide nearly the entire offense either.

We just got home from the game. Great win for the Aggies coming back from 11 down to win it. The second half was perhaps the best half of basketball the Ags have played this year. Les made some great defensive adjustments at halftime. The 1-2-2 zone press where we were picking them up at 3/4 court really got our defense going and, like Les likes to say, good defense leads to it good offense. Good contributions from a lot of players tonight and it was good to see Kane Milling find his shot.

So after losing the Causeway football game, being left out the playoffs and the WBB team getting thumped by Sac, I needed this!