79-72 Ags. Sac took the Aggies to the limit. Hannah Friend, the Hornet's 6'0 So G transfer from Delaware, got hot from 3 and scored 25 points. The Hornet's record was deceptive with 4 loses to major programs.

All 5 of the Aggie starters ended up in double figures with Morgan Bertsch scoring 29 with 7 boards. I thought the Aggies did a great job of handling the Hornets' full court pressure. They had only 12 turnovers and they made good decisions with their passes and really demonstrated their experience and maturity. They just don't get rattled when the pressure is on.

7-0 and rolling on but this one felt a little too close for comfort.

It's working for me now.

54-52 Aggies at the end of the 3rd quarter. Sac is hitting their 3's. The Aggies have their hands full right now.

Anybody having problems with the online stream? It keeps crashing on me...??

Crushing loss...damnit!

Nice pic, Oldbanduhalum, you caught the moment!

Well as Jim Les said after the game, "This was a character building game for this team. Good teams find a way to win when they don't play their best." That obviously was the case tonight.

The Ags won despite shooting only 31% but held the Bears to 28% which included 1-23 from 3 for only 4%...amazing. It was UGLY but it's a win and it keeps the home court winning streak alive at 12 straight. Les preaches that good defense can keep you in a position to win when everything else is not going well. Tonight's win demonstrated that in spades.

The Ags looked dead in the water down 11 with 4:27 to go. Siler Schneider and TJ Shorts were clutch down the stretch as the Ags closed the game on a 16-0 run. Chima Moneke was a monster on the boards with 16 and scored 17 points but did not shoot well. He was 4-12 from the floor and only 8-16 from the line. I guess there were quite a few pro scouts in the stands and I'm sure Chima isn't happy with his offense tonight but he'll bounce back.

Great comeback for the Aggies.

The online stream is back up if you can bear to watch it...

Don't know. I'm was watching online before the feed went down. The crowd looked small though.

The Big West stream is not working. Live stats and the Aggie radio broadcast are ok.

This may have been the ugliest and most boring half of basketball by two college teams I've ever seen. The Ags blistered the nets with 26% shooting and UNC almost kept pace with 23% shooting. The score was 18-11 Aggies with under 3 minutes to go in the half before the Bears actually managed to make a couple of shots.

I think most of the fans fell asleep about midway through the half.

We are the only team in the Top 25 that is 6-0. Our SOS must be hurting us from being ranked even higher. The St Marys and Oregon State games loom big for us as long as we take care of business and beat the teams we should be beating. The sky is the limit for this fine team.

Here's a few more schools for the Big West to consider:

Academy of Art (well they've got some upset history with us)
Notre Dame (the da Namur one)
Holy Names (might as well keep God happy)
William Jessop (Onward Christian Soldiers)...

Bob Dunning wrote a wonderful nostalgic piece today about The Toom.

Excerpt:

"The old scoreboard, which seemed always to favor the home team, is still standing, and if it survives the tear-down, wouldn’t it be great if it was lit up brightly every night to read “Aggies 37, Nevada 21” to commemorate that tremendous victory 40 years ago played before 12,800 punch-drunk fans who couldn’t believe the rout they were witnessing.

The town and the campus were both much smaller then, but that remains the largest attendance ever for an Aggie home game, either at Toomey Field or at the current venue, Aggie Stadium.

I remember on Nevada’s first play from scrimmage, UC Davis defensive end Casey Merrill broke through the Wolf Pack front line and sacked Nevada’s talented quarterback for a significant loss. They may as well have called the game then.

I remember the closing game of the 1963 season when Will Lotter’s final team, led by quarterback Dick Carriere, beat Sac State, 17-8, to claim the Far Western Conference championship.

As Lotter and Carriere and several other players boarded the horse-drawn carriage that went to the game winner, a hoarse Lotter gave an impassioned and impromptu speech where he noted that when the team’s seniors arrived on campus as freshmen in 1960, they didn’t win a single game.

I remember the tremendous Columbus Day storm of 1962 when Toomey Field became Toomey Lake and fullback Bob Foster was called on to regularly carry the ball through the mud and muck because no one dared to throw a pass.

The Aggies won that one, 8-6, establishing the margin of victory by going for a two-point conversion, since kicking a PAT on the sloppy field was out of the question.

I especially remember the Fog Bowl game against Lehigh in the 1977 Division II semifinals when TV color commentator Ara Parseghian famously welcomed the viewing audience to the beautiful San Joaquin Valley.

In respect to the potential East Coast audience, the game had a 10 a.m. start and a dense December fog emerged from the soggy turf to add to the intrigue.

And who can forget the mighty steam engine with the loud whistle that went off after every Aggie score, a decibel-busting eruption that clearly would violate any noise ordinance we have in place today.

Jim Sochor’s first game as a coach on Toomey Field — as opposed to the times he appeared there as a standout quarterback for FWC power San Francisco State — produced a 24-14 win over University of San Francisco. There’s nothing about that game, besides the win itself, that gave even a hint to Aggie fans of the magical 19-year run that led Sochor into the College Football Hall of Fame.

The memories and rich and will never fade. Win, lose or draw, Toomey Field was the place to be on a Saturday night in the fall.

I suppose some of us are guilty of living in the past. But what a glorious past it was."

http://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/bob-dunning-toomey-field-the-memories-will-never-fade/

That makes sense.

Possibly. Nina is very athletic and has good length. Her offensive game has improved this year too. She's still maturing as a player and her inexperience shows at times when she loses focus and makes a poor decision that ends up in a turnover. Hopefully, that will improve with more playing time.

On the other hand, Dani is a very mature player who brings steadiness and stability to the floor. I think that she is probably nursing an injury or has been under the weather. I expect to see her back and playing well pretty soon.

Maybe it's time for the Aggies to find a new home but where.....??

Absolutely, any of those teams would have been better.

I'm not excited about adding these two schools. Bake should be able to come in and be fairly competitive. UCSD has to go through what we did and it will be a while before they are up to D1 speed and, even then, who knows how they will fare.

The thing that I don't like about this is that it adds two more home games to our basketball schedules with two teams that the students could care less about and does nothing for our rpi's and sos's. Then, if Hawai'i leaves, the conference gets even weaker.

Men's BB already can't get high quality OOC home games as it is and now we will have 2 less opportunities to try and bring in teams that the fans care to see. Women's BB, on the other hand, has been slowly but steadily bringing in some nice OOC games and, if they have a banner year this year, they might be able to schedule even more high quality teams. Now they have fewer opportunities to do so also.

Both of the basketball programs are getting better. They are the programs that can lead us to greater D1 exposure and success at a level that just might get the students' and the general fans' attention. We need to play up in basketball even if we take our lumps and, if we can schedule one or two ooc home games a year with some big name schools, we'll get fans in the seats even if we get thumped. Unfortunately, UCSD and Bake won't bring any new fans into the Pavilion.

How long will Hawai'i stay now...??