i was there yesterday, and thought the Ags played really well. only had one short period in the 2nd half where the offense bogged down, letting them cut the lead fro 14 to 7; else, good movement, good shot selection, really good ball control. we had 5 guys in double figures, and matched them on the boards despite their size advantage. JT was very solid on both ends of the floor, and that's always a good thing to see. if we can move the ball like that, limit the turnovers, and shoot like that, we'll do well in the Big West. Very entertaining performance.

As an aside, we were sitting in the courtside leather seats (a thank you from the department), and that was really cool. you really get to appreciate the speed and quickness of the players, and get a great view of the offensive flow. we were pretty tough on defense all game -> really limited the number of easy shots. lots of hard work, lot of communication, and good effort on the boards to limit them to single shots. Looking forward to getting up for a few Saturday night games in the new year.

Blakes is where the Hallmark now sits. The Cellar restaurant in the bottom (sawdust on the floor), bar and nicer restuarant upstairs. My roommate was a bartender, way back in the day

i'll be there. grad at 11:30 to watch the first half of the Wash-Bama game then head over to the pavillion. tough opponent especially for a weird 2:00 new year's eve tipoff. they are coming off a win over Riverside (who looks bad this year), and we're coming off a nice win over Seattle. Looking forward to seeing them in person for the first time.

both teams are shooting less than 40%, and we're 1-9 from 3's. and only down 2 points at the half. the fact that we have 14 points off turnovers is a big reason for keeping it close, considering our foul problems. hopefully we weathered that storm and come out playing well in the 2nd.

stats make it look like the style of a 7th place game of a high school tournament in a mostly empty gym.

we were horrible down there. very uninspired late season loss to an average USD. we beat Harbaugh at Toomey 37-27 in what was a HUGE game for them for legitimacy. the next year was a Aggie Stadium -> a classic. Josh Johnson, who was a great QB, led them to a late TD to take a 46-42. matt engle led us down in the last minute throwing a TD with seconds to go to win 49-46. that may have been my favorite game at the new stadium. the next year (2008) is when we lost down there. really bad game. beat them pretty soundly in 2010 down there.

looks like my wife and i will be at the san diego state game.

pretty early for the season ticket renewals. seems like they usually come in Feb/March. but, this seems like an early announcement for the schedule, so who knows.

i was there with my son, who was in his freshmen year at Davis. i remember taking him back to his off-campus dorm and him yelling out 'how the f*CK did we loss that game'. his roommate replied 'uh, hi, this is my mom and dad'; mom and dad were up for a visit to their son's new school!

added insult to his injury!

i think the fly concept is out there in many college offenses. here is an article about Montana's use of the fly sweep and screens in their offense.

Montana Fly

Bob Stitt, the coach at Montana, is credited with being an innovator of many fly sweep concepts. West Virginia, among others, have credited him with contributions to their scheme. some of the highlights i see from Montana look alot like most of the Big Sky offenses with guys in motion, read-pass options, etc. so long to power running and west-coast style passing concepts.

BGA - we are on the same wavelength with regard to JT. Love to see him have a big game and get himself back on track. I thought he had a couple early opportunities against Rabb (who is a really, really good defensive player) that went in and out; my heart sank with the misses, because i thought that's what he needs himself going. He works really hard, tries really hard (maybe a little too hard), so i'd love to see him reap the benefits of that!

I've been really disappointed in JT's game this year -> i was hoping for a return to where he was back before injury, but i haven't seen that. He's a good kid, been at Davis forever, so i'd like to see him excel. seems like he never got his confidence back after the injuries.

i like schneider, but he can get overpowered by a physical guard (like Saturday). graham and lemar are both pretty solid players. Henn has shown some flashes. I'd like to see goode out there to see what he brings to the table.

early in the game my wife said 'we'll never win, too many man-buns'. i think what she meant is that we looked much softer than Cal in the 1st half.

but, yeah, the man-buns are a really bad look.

I could NOT agree more!

this is kind of a cool video from his first day on the job:

Meet Dan Hawkins

i've heard the 'we should join the MWC' from some of my old teammates for the past 6 months or so, and i can't see how that's feasible. first, why would the MWC want Davis? they have 12 teams now with a conference championship. add Davis and who else? Its not clear what the attraction would be to them to add another northern california team, when they could look to places like texas (UTSA, maybe). secondly, where do we get the money? SJ State paid $2M initiation fee to join. we'd have to add something like 20 scholarships for football and the same number for women (i think that's the Title IX rule). we'd have to increase the size of the stadium to meet the FBS minimum (i think its something close to 20000). and the budgets would go way up to meet the levels of other MWC (especially those in California). third, do our other sports want to abandon the Big West for the Mountain West? Its not going to be a 'football-only' like we have in the Big Sky.

let's focus on getting competitive here. we used to draw 10-11K for games against 'the sisters of the poor' (to paraphrase Bob Dunning), no reason we can't get back there and beyond for Big Sky opponents and FCS playoff games. I'm not sure how we would draw on those wonderful Thursday night 7:30 MWC kickoffs for ESPN2 -> Spartan Stadium is a ghost town for those and even Boise doesn't fill up for those games.

Dan did a fair amount of announcing for ESPN and had participated in a SIRIUS radio show about college football. He's remained in contact with plenty of coaches around the nation, so hopefully he'll have a good list of up-and-comers that can join the staff and have a big impact.

i thought he was referring to a question about 'who was the slowest, least athletic guy you ever saw play at ANY level?'

i had heard through the grapevine that we are at U-San Diego. probably on Sept 16, but that's just hearsay.

just curious...did anyone ELSE here get a shout out during the press conference?

i believe this has been in the works for some time. i know dan had concerns the last go-around about facilities, salaries, support, etc., so maybe some prominent alum ponied up some bucks to get that taken care of. at the causeway, there were many of our teammates (dan and i played together one year) that i hadn't seen in quite some time, some of whom had contributed big bucks to the stadium effort. not too surprising that they were there in retrospect.

my only concern is that he's been out of college coaching for 5 years. he's was the head coach of the US national team at some World Championships, and the offensive coordinator of a team in Vienna down in Australia but away from NCAA for a bit. he'll bring alot of energy, a more innovative offense, and hopefully some experienced coaches. and, hopefully, alot of support from some alum/donors. he does come in with eyes wide open -> realizes the changes that need to be put in place to succeed at this level (more than good old 'Aggie Pride').

his son has been coaching (did a stint at Ohio State as a grad assistant, was an OC at an oregon high school, worked with Dan at numerous overseas clinics). wouldn't be surprised to join the Aggie staff, but, hopefully not in a high profile job (like OC).

completely agree to that! a power run game is a really difficult approach, unless you have plenty of quality depth. that's a tall order for FCS.

i think the challange in recreating the high flying offenses that we used to have, is the current NCAA restrictions on practice time. it times alot of time on the field to implement a dozen screen pass packages every week, time that they are no longer allowed. same with the precise downfield progression passing packages; you just don't see offenses like that in college any more. more and more of the 'read-react' run/pass option that we see week-in and week-out in the Big Sky.

I miss the good old days. i DON'T miss the 4 hour long wednesday night practices (or the in-season 2-a-days we had before school started!) that we endured perfecting the offensive schemes of those days.