I like this game a lot. It's nice to see Hawkins and Blue extending our schedule beyond the usual west coast teams in our OOC games.

They make it sound like we had a chip on our shoulder after losing to them in1977 and "never invited them back." I seriously doubt that had anything at all to do with scheduling Lehigh again. The cost of travel, logistics and scheduling would have been the biggest factor for us playing them again especially if it was going to be a home and home agreement.

Well, maybe he’ll go 49 and cough it up on the one yard line from a shoe string tackle! :joke:

I gleaned the following from a post by Sparky over on the Big West Boards. He nicely sums up the explosive potential that UCSB will have this year:

""Looking deeper at SB, they will be unbelievably deep at the guard/wing positions. Max Heidegger was a contender for POY for much of the season before fading late. Devearl Ramsey was a 4 star recruit before transferring after his freshman season at Nevada, Ar'mond Davis was the #8 rated JC player in the country before heading to Alabama, he comes to SB as a grad transfer, Zach Moore was a starter his final 16 games at Seattle and average 10.4 ppg as a soph. Additionally, JaQuori McGlothlin was a starter for Oregon State in 32 of the 38 games he played as a Beaver, and set the frosh record for three pointers at the school. He will be eligible at the break. The problem for UCSB appears to be in the post. They will rely on returner Ami Lakoju and to back him up have JC forward Robinson Idehen who averaged 8.5 points and 7.7 rebounds a game at the JC level, and 4 star freshman Amadou Sow. Their season depends on how quickly they can jell these guys and also how solid the post play is."

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/bigwest/2018-19-big-west-predictions-t22254-s10.html

A lot of new pieces to fit in place for the women this year but Jen Gross has built a very strong mid-major program. I hope the new players will pick up where their predecessors left off.

Just to make things feels a little worse, the Stanford game is on my birthday. I would love to be in Palo Alto to celebrate the upcoming, monumental upset over The Cardinal on my birthday! O'k...so I'm a dreamer.... :joke:

We'll be way up north in Wisconsin on Lake Shishebogama and, with the game starting at 11 out west, I'll try to tune in the Pac12 network online at 8 a.m. I'm not sure I'll be able to stream the game though, The wi-fi up there is not that strong.

Ags @ Long Beach on January 12

Long Beach @ UCD on February 16

Great to see the women playing The Cardinal again.

Well, unfortunately, my wife and I are going to miss the Stanford and Idaho games...bummer! We'll be back in Wisconsin and Indiana visiting family and we'll be going to the Nebraska @ Michigan game also. My wife is a Michigan alum and we're meeting up with a couple of her former sorority sisters and their husbands after many years for a mini-reunion. I'll be the only not Michigan grad in the group. I'd rather be going to the Stanford game but this reunion has been planned for quite a while.

Amen!!!

As usual, it looks like the BW will be an all-out dogfight. Lots of parity among the better teams and, of course, anyone can beat anyone on any given day. I'm surprised that the Ags are ranked above Fullerton since they have 3 of the best players in the Big West in their starting 5: Ahmad, Allman and Rowe. UCSB and Fullerton look very strong to me.

The coaches need to post that in big, bold letters on every locker in the locker room the week before the game.

They just listed their Top 5 Rising Juniors as well but no Aggies on this list:

1. Max Heidegger UCSB
2. Evan Leonard Irvine
3. Jackson Rowe Fullerton
4. Tommy Rutherford Irvine
5. Ron Freeman Long Beach

https://bustingbrackets.com/2018/07/25/big-west-basketball-top-5-rising-juniors-for-2018-19/

It looks like Van Arden would be a really great recruit if we are able to land him.

Nice find, movielover. I'm adding a link to the start of the discussion thread:

https://csnbbs.com/thread-853823.html

Hawk is competing with some heavyweights!

Well said...firmly held, old beliefs often create tunnel vision and an unwillingness to consider other options and that can slow down progress to a snail's pace. I'm so glad that we are apparently beyond all those biased opinions assuming that high caliber athletics and outstanding academics are incompatible with each other.

That's too bad. They have a long and proud football history. D2 football is all but dead in the west.

The FIBA website is a nice find. It has complete stats for all the teams and players in European Championships. Fuller has averaged 9.5 points, 1.5 rebounds and 0.8 assists in 4 games. He is 6'5 which is good size for a shooting guard.

GB has lost all of their games so far to Turkey, Montenegro, Lithuania and Croatia. The FIBA Team World Rankings has GB at #39, Turkey #17, Montenegro #31, Lithuania #6 and Croatia #8. GB will play #9 Greece next.

http://www.fiba.basketball/europe/u20/2018/team/Great-Britain

He looks impressive. Nice drives to the bucket for layups with either hand and nailing 3's. He's playing on the Under 20 Great Britain squad and scored a team high 22 in their 69-63 loss to Germany and had another team high with 20 in a 80-70 loss to Montenegro. Deng Camp re-ranked their Top 50 Great Britain players and kept Fuller at #1. He may have the talent and experience to play as a true freshman for the Ags.

https://twitter.com/DengCamp

It might not make that much difference in the BW Conference since there's generally close parity between the top and the bottom teams. I think the author made a good point in the article when he pointed out historically just how much of a difference it makes being a 12 seed playing a 5 rather than being a 14 seed playing a 3: a 12 seed has a 37.5% chance of winning vs 15% chance for a 14 seed.

Anything that can help boost the rpi for small programs will certainly be a welcome change. It gets old seeing the same programs in the higher seeds year after year. Those programs pretty much have a lock on the tournament.