I was looking at the stats and the Aggies had 23 TO's...not good at all. We also gave up 16 offensive boards...wow. The good news is that the Ags came back from being down one point after 3 quarters and won the game in the 4th on the road.

Learn from it and get better. Hawai'i comes to town on Saturday.

This was a blue collar game dominated by tough defense. The shots weren't dropping for the Aggies as they would have liked but their hard-nosed defense kept them close until they put on a 15-1 run midway through the second half to break the game open.

The Aggie defense came up with 12 steals and forced 22 TO's. It was great seeing the Aggies trapping the UCI guards near mid-court and tipping balls in the passing lanes. The D rarely broke down and, when an Irvine player beat an Aggie defender, he usually found himself running squarely into another Aggie defender helping out. That was thing of beauty; it was defense played the way it should be.

How about TJ Shorts? He is so much fun to watch especially when he is driving the ball to the hoop and manages to score amongst the redwoods. He's so quick and can start and stop on a dime. He kept us in the game offensively when everyone else was struggling to get the ball through the hoop.

Chima had to work for every point and rebound he got against the Anteaters' interior. They were big and physical but it's hard to contain Chima for the entire 40 minutes and he ended up with yet another double double.

Siler Schneider has been struggling with his perimeter shot lately and the struggles continued tonight shooting only 4-13. Even when his shot isn't falling Siler gives you 100% and he still managed to score 10 points.

Jim Les complimented Irvine's FT defense after the game as the Aggies were only 16 of 28 from the line and a bunch of those were the front ends of 1 and 1's. That will lose us some close games if that does not improve.

Defensive battles are often described as being "ugly" even when you win one. It may not be pretty when the defenses are dominating and the game is low scoring but the Aggie defense was really fun to watch tonight. Good job Ags!

There was a small crowd of 1203 in attendance with the student's gone but that was to be expected.

The winner of the Walter Payton Award will be announced tomorrow at the awards banquet in Frisco, Texas, the day before the FCS Championship game. Coach Hawkins and the parents of Kellan Doss will be in attendance with Keelan for the announcement.

Here is some good news for Aggie fans as reported in today's Enterprise:

"With all the hoopla surrounding Doss, is the NFL draft-eligible junior returning to Davis for his senior season?"

“As of right now, that’s what it’s mostly looking like,” the Alameda native told The Enterprise on Tuesday. “I need to talk to a couple of people, but as of right now, that’s almost 100 percent certain that I am.”

http://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/doss-heads-to-texas-in-hopes-of-payton-trophy/

Good luck to Keelan Doss tomorrow and let's hope we get to see him perform his magic next year in an Aggie uniform as well.

I think it's likely that we'll see a lot of zone defenses in conference play.

The Aggie opponents get better and better with their defensive strategies to slow down them down as the season progresses as they see more film on the Ags. Morgan pretty much dominated early on with her spin moves in the paint which really opened things up from the perimeter for the Ags and our guards were knocking down their threes. Teams are now packing their defenses into the paint and making it very difficult for her to get those buckets in close. They are also now willing to give her those mid-range jumpers that haven't been falling for her. In addition, our 3 point shooting has lapsed significantly lately. We need to heat up from outside again to be as prolific as we were offensively in the early season.

Good teams are able to make adjustments to the defensive schemes opponents throw at them during the season. We need to do just that if the Aggies are going to achieve the lofty goals they have set for themselves this year.

Yes, it's unfortunate that the students are still gone and we'll probably have less than 1500 in the seats. As you said, rebounding and defense are the keys to this game. It would be nice if we are able to can a few buckets from the perimeter to help open up the inside a bit. I'm sure Irvine will be collapsing on Chima and it will be physical. Rutherford and Worku were recruited by Jim Les but decided on Irvine and have become two of the mainstays in their lineup.

Ouch! Sounds like things are in total disarray at UCR...

In my opinion the Bee fairly reflects the views of the majority of people in this highly diverse, politically progressive state which is fine for me. I would consider myself as being a politically progressive centrist but far from being "radical" and I like the viewpoints of the Bee. To each their own though...

I'm surprised at the timing of letting Cutts go right before the start of conference play. You would think that they would have let him finish the year and then evaluate their options. Lots of coaches are shown the door at the end of the season so they would have a lot more potential candidates to choose from also. Of course, they may not hire anyone before the end of the season either.

Legends of Chima. Chima is the Kingdom in the game. Have fun competing for Mt Cavora's precious Chi:

https://www.lego.com/en-us/videos/themes/chima/trailer-welcome-to-chima-dcde8cbc9e184f7dbe2f49029f0c214a

38-19 Ags at the half. Chima has 17.

Onyebalu is in street clothes. Joe Mooney started in his place

My high school gym in a small town in Indiana was bigger than the Hornets Nest. I hate it when the Ags have to play them in that crackerbox.

I've done the same thing a lot. When I was researching the Fordham WBB team I found that their leading scorer is G'mrice Davis. My tongue got tangled up just trying to work out how her first name might be pronounced and settled on GEM-reese. Then the KDVS radio team pronounced it Ge-MARE-iss which I think is quite a pretty name. I'm sure they had a media guide with the correct pronunciation though.

Then there's a Sac State guard that's gets a lot of playing time: Izayah Mauriohooho-Le'afa. I pity their broadcast team when he's involved in some fast action play-by-play!

Hope we get a good holiday crowd.

WSU certainly wasn't as good as everyone thought but at the time they had a lot of momentum and a large raucous fan base behind them. It was a tough environment for the Ags to play in. I thought the Aggies' execution on offense and defense was one of the best efforts I've seen from an Aggie team in a long time. Good shooting and tenacious defense. They really put it all together and caught Wazzu off guard but the Cougars did fade badly after the loss to the Aggies.

Right now, as far as the Big West goes, I think the Aggies could be considering one of the top 4 teams with Santa Barbara looking like the the early favorite. It'll be a dogfight as usual. The Ags have just been far too inconsistent, on offense especially, to be considered an odds on favorite.

That's a good point, 69aggie. They'll probably face a similar situation in the Big West Tournament depending upon their seeding albeit they won't be playing across the country with 3 time zone changes. The Big West Tournament can be exhausting especially for those teams that play 3 games in 3 days. Brutal!

6-4 is is pretty good. Two wins against Pacific is tough to do and the win at WSU was right up there with our best wins ever.

Here's a breakdown of all the Big West OOC games through December 28th that I found over on the Big West Boards:

Big West overall: 54-65

vs. Division I: 40-65

vs. America East: 0-1
vs. American Athletic: 0-1
vs. Atlantic 10: 1-0
vs. Atlantic Coast: 0-2
vs. Big 12: 0-2
vs. Big Sky: 10-10
vs. Big South: 0-1
vs. Big Ten: 0-3
vs. Colonial: 1-1
vs. Ivy: 1-2
vs. Metro Atlantic Athletic: 0-1
vs. Mid-American: 0-2
vs. Mid-Eastern Athletic: 0-1
vs. Missouri Valley: 1-0
vs. Mountain West: 1-8
vs. Ohio Valley: 0-1
vs. Pacific-12: 4-12
vs. Southeastern: 0-3
vs. Southland: 1-0
vs. Southwestern Athletic: 3-0
vs. Summit: 3-1
vs. Sun Belt: 1-1
vs. West Coast: 11-7
vs. Western Athletic: 2-5

home: 33-14 (19-14 vs. D1)
neutral: 7-8
away: 14-43

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/bigwest/thursday-december-28-2017-games-t21605-s20.html

The Aggies fall 70-62. After tying the game at 51 Bre Cavanaugh took over canning step back 3's and the Rams continued to manhandle the Aggies on the boards. The Rams had their top 3 players play all 40 minutes and they scored 68 of their 70 points. Pretty amazing trio of players for Fordham.

The Rams have not been a prolific offensive team this year only scoring over 70 points in two games this year but the Aggie defense could not gets stops when they needed it. Fordham also had 11 offensive rebounds.

The Aggies have now lost 3 out of their last 4 games. Overall, they have won the games they should have won and early on beat WSU and St Mary's. Lately, however, they have struggled especially on offense against good competition. We'll have to see if they can get back up to playing as well as they are capable of playing against the Big West.

The Ags are now going to enjoy the Big Apple by attending the "The Lion King" tonight and have a day of sightseeing tomorrow before a late flight back home.