Nice win coming back from 8 down with 13 minutes to go to win pulling away 72-59.

The first 10 minutes were pretty ragged and Coach Les was trying a lot of different combinations of players. Chima kept us close early with 13 and, after picking up his 2nd personal, TJ Shorts and Joe Mooney contributed 7 each.

The difference in the game so far is that over half of the Bears 12 FG's were 3 pointers on 6-12 from downtown. The Ags were only 1-3 from behind the arc. The Aggie defense looked pretty good and forced 11 TO's but got manhandled on the boards 17-7 of which UNC had 7 offensive boards.

UNC 35 Aggies 32 at the half.

The Big Sky TV link above is the feed from Pluto TV also but you are just watching online from the Big Sky TV website. Otherwise, if you have a smart tv, you should be able to download the app directly to your tv app lineup. If you have Amazon Prime or Roku or Apple TV etc, you can download the app to your tv directly from those sources as well. Hope that helps.

We haven't seen anymore of that so, hopefully, that's been handled by Hawk.

I don't think we'll be flat again.

I expect that Sac will draw a pretty good crowd for this game considering this is their best chance for the playoffs in many years. They have a very athletic QB who is similar to SUU's Tyler. He has the ability to make something out of nothing with his legs and he is an accurate passer. As usual, Sac will be very athletic with good speed and quickness.

We need to play smarter than Sac and not get caught up in their trash talk which will most definitely happen in a game like this. Let them shoot themselves in the foot like they often do against us.

That's a surprise to me. Granted, we lost a lot of players from last year's championship team but the Bears were 11-18 overall last season and 7-11 in the Big Sky which is a weak basketball conference in comparison with the Big West. I think Coach Les should post the 7 point underdog statement on the locker room wall before the game!

Targeting is a very tough call to get consistently right and I support the efforts to protect the players and make the game a bit safer. It seems to me that, with all the concerning research about CTE, that the officials have been directed to throw the flag on any questionable hits and then review the play afterwards if there if any doubt at all. The rule favors erroring on the side of safety.

I didn't see our player's arms up high from where I was sitting. It just looked like a bang-bang play and the Aggie defender just reacted in an almost protective manner.

I've seen a lot of targeting calls where the ball carrier lowers his head when the defender is coming in low and they collide helmet to helmet and the defender then gets flagged for targeting. That's a rough call on the defender!

Hahahaha!

I thought the targeting call was wrong and it was a clean play. Who was the player that got ejected? Will he be out for the Sac game?

I think you meant "majors," Russ...and it is a great idea!

I'm sure that the marketing can be more focused and improved but I'm worried that the problem goes much deeper. I think the Aggie fan culture has changed over the years since we went to D1.

UCD is rightfully known more for its academics than its athletics. The student body is huge but it is made up of mostly very scholarly students who grew up in the digital age. These students were studious in high school and most likely they were not that much interested in their high school's sports.

High school sports used to be the center of high school social activity and that is not the case anymore. Kids today have their digital devices, all sorts of social media to participate in, immersive video games and addictive cable TV series to binge on with their friends. If you didn't grow up a sports fan, you are not going to become one at college when there are so many other innovative digital things to do in between studying.

I've got nothing against "nerds," in fact, I love them and most "nerds" could give a hoot about college and pro sports. When you look around Aggie Stadium you see a lot of folks in the older generation and some families with young kids...not a lot of students.

Then there's all the concerns about CTE and the number of injuries in football and the huge financial cost of the sport. Football participation has declined among youth and high school athletics except perhaps in the deep south where it rivals religion.

Davis is a progressive and informed community and I think, that even though the population of Davis has increased dramatically recently, there is a lot less interest in Aggie football in the community than there was in the D2 days. I think the majority of Davis families see football as just too dangerous.

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, I love the game, but I think the times have changed and football, especially at our level, faces some really big hurdles in a university town like Davis.

This was a hard fought win over a very athletic Pepperdine team. The Ags started off hitting their first 4 shots and led 10-0 only a minute and a half into the game. They quickly cooled off though and and got out hustled on the defensive boards and the Waves came back to within one. The Ags built the lead up as many as 11 points in the 2nd half but couldn't shake the scrappy Waves.

Pepperdine was crashing the boards and getting a lot of offensive rebounds and 2nd chance points. They out rebounded the Aggies 45-37 overall and had 18 offensive boards that led to 18 2nd chance points. The Waves also played hard-nosed defense and the Ags were not getting a lot of open looks from 3. The Ags hit only 5 of 16 for the game after going 17 of 32 against Washington State.

Jen Gross saw that the Ags needed some more quickness and length on the floor to slow down the offensive rebounding of the Waves so she brought in Nina Bessolo and Cierra Hall and they contributed a combined 13 points and 9 rebounds in 13 minutes of PT each.

The star of the game though was Morgan Bertsch. Pepperdine was taking away the shots behind the arc so the Ags went inside to Bertsch and she responded with a monster game. She scored 27 points on 13 of 18 from the floor and 1-3 from the line. Her lightening quick spin moves in the paint are practically impossible to stop. She became only the 4th Aggie junior to reach 1,000 career points joining Carol Rische, Sydnee Fipps, and Ellen Porshneva.

Rachel Nagel had another stellar game also. She contributed 14 points on 5-8 shooting overall and 3 of 4 from the line.

If this team has a Achilles heel it may be rebounding especially on the defensive boards. Pepperdine was just getting too many offensive boards and 50/50 balls being batted around in the paint. To the Aggies credit though, they adjusted to not getting many open 3 point looks, went inside and outscored the Waves 40-28 in the paint. Good teams adjust and find ways to win and the Ags did that today. Great coaching and effort by the Aggies!

That was a sloppy first quarter for the Aggies. They turned the ball over and got out hustled on the boards.

No excuses but it must be hard for a team to come into the stadium and see it mostly empty with maybe a 100 students in the Aggie Pack. It's obvious that the students are not interested. The atmosphere in the stadium was flat and so was the team. In the Enterprise recap Maier said he was even surprised how flat the team was in the beginning.

I'm getting more and more skeptical that Aggie Football will ever regain a consistent following no matter how much better they get. There were 10,500 at the Poly game, then we trounced ISU and then we get to play the top team in the Big Sky and the stadium is practically empty...that doesn't bode well for us and it must certainly be disappointing for the team. A lot of the fans that do show up just sit there quietly and most don't even stand up for the kickoffs anymore...and that used to be a tradition...

All the better for us to play the spoiler for the Hornets but we'll need to play a lot better than we did tonight.

Sac is blowing out Poly 49-0 after 3 quarters. We may be in a world of hurt next week....

Ags lose 4-3 on penalty kicks. This is the part of soccer that I hate...games decided on penalty kicks suck...even if you win...

The Ags and the Titans are all knotted up at 0-0 going into the 2nd OT

Lots of comments from former Aggie and SUU head coach, Demario Warren, in today's Enterprise. Also, Ken O'Brien and the 1882 team will be honored. Great day for Aggie football!

Excerpt: Notes: "There will be tons going on off the field Saturday. First, the 14-member Aggie senior class — Darryl Graham, Bua, Grant Hilton, Justin Williams, Julian Bertero, Andrew Carriger, Keleen Culberson, Derek Baljeu, Brock Dale, Erik Holmer, Desmond Lewis, Kyle Sulka, Ryan Green and Brandon Weaver — will be honored. Then former Aggie QB Ken O’Brien and the 1982 Davis team that made an appearance in the Division II national championship game will be feted. O’Brien, who later had a brilliant career with the New York Jets, is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. He will be honored as the first player commemorated on the new Pride Wall at Aggie Stadium. …Trivia Time (and if you’re a UCD fan and miss this one, go to the back of the class): Q. Who was O’Brien’s fullback in ’82? A. None other than current Davis head coach Dan Hawkins."

http://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/davis-defense-goes-hunting-for-sudden-satisfaction/