The chippy folks over on the Big West Boards say that it is definitely a league game.

I think some paid, alt-right agitator was just getting the liberal Bee to bite on some fake news. SAD!

I read in the Sac Bee today that our home game with Hawai'i will not count as a conference game. I thought it must be an error but I checked our official schedule and the game does not have an asterisk by it which would indicate that it is indeed not a conference game. Huh...?

I checked all the schedules and every team plays 16 conference games and our home game with Hawai'i is the only game which will not count as a conference game. I don't get it...??? :-|

Fullerton beat Irvine 56-54 on Wednesday night so the Ags and Irvine each have 4 losses in the BW now. If the Ags beat CSUN they will be tied with Irvine at 9-4 for first place in the conference.

The Big West Tournament is brutal. I'm not a huge fan of these post-season tournaments determining the team that goes to the NCAA. It works for the big power conferences because they send so many of their teams to the Big Dance that it often doesn't matter if you lose in the post-season tournament. So, for the most part, the post-season tournaments for the power conferences are primarily big money makers for the conference. But, in a one bid conference like the Big West, you can win the regular season title and then lose in the post-season tournament and you're out of the NCAA.

I wasn't able to watch this one. Sounds like it was a pretty good battle. Win #20 for the Ags.

What a great job Coach Jen Gross is doing with this program. A couple of weeks ago Coach Les complimented the women by saying, "We're just swimming in their wake."

Congrats to the Lady Ags on getting their magical 20th win of the season!

All the games are especially important now. The Ags want to be playing well when the BW Tournament is here and the higher the seed the better. My wife and I will be there as always.

Go Ags!

I hope Hexter at least keeps his regular position. He and Blue seemed to have hit it off and he gave Blue the green light on quite a few important decisions. It was also great to see Hexter attending Aggie athletic events and being so supportive. The new chancellor will certainly need someone like Hexter to help him get oriented to UCD and, hopefully, Hexter will get him on board with the direction that Blue is taking the program.

He sounds like a tremendously accomplished man with a great deal of success in creating opportunities to underserved students. Georgia Tech has a big time athletics program so lets hope he will be supportive of the future growth of athletics at UCD as well.

They are the team to beat in the Big West. As a whole, the overall strength of the Big West is down this year. I think if UCI were to win the BW Tournament that they would be a 15 or 16 seed at best and might even be a play-in team.

Irvine beat Riverside 79-60 to take over first place in the Big West. With Luke Nelson back in their lineup the Eaters are the strongest team in the conference and the odds on favorite to win the title.

The Titans lead wire to wire and beat the Ags 79-72 and the Ags head home with a disappointing 0-2 road trip. The Ags got off to an awful start once again and were never able to take the lead. They did make a run at it in the final 5 minutes going from 12 down to just 5 with 30 seconds to play. Then with a chance to cut the lead to 3 or 2 Mikey Henn threw a pass to a wide open Moneke but the ball went through Chima's hands and that pretty much sealed the deal.

The Ags were sloppy with the basketball and turned it over 20 times which led to 22 points off turnovers by the Titans. Brynton Lemar led the Ags with 20 and Siler Schneider chipped in 18.

The Ags will drop to second in the Big West or remain in a tie with Irvine depending upon the outcome of the game between Irvine and Riverside.

33-25 Fullerton at the half. I wouldn't want to be in the locker room with Coach Les after that miserable first half by the Aggies. The Ags are simply getting outplayed while shooting 33% to go along with 11 TO's. JT and Chima have combined for 1 point.

The Ags are asleep at the wheel to start the game. 4 minutes in and they trail 9-0 and have 4 TO's. Ugh!

(Y)

From my perspective Chima's struggles are a little of both. Teams are definitely sagging on him and playing him very physical and the Ags are also seeing more zone defenses designed to stop our interior game. But, Chima has also been missing shots that he was routinely making earlier in the season and is probably pressing a bit right now.

He has been demonstrably frustrated with himself lately. He's and emotional player who thrives on being an impactful contributor to the team and has gotten a lot of attention in the press recently. All players go through tough stretches and I think Chima has the athletic ability to adjust to the way teams are now defending him and will get untracked soon. At least I hope so since well absolutely need his offensive contribution.

The blocking fouls against the Ags were tough to watch. I think the NCAA rules committee needs to take a long, hard look and reevaluating the call when the offensive player initiates contact into the defender and the defender gets called for a block. Defenders are almost always at a disadvantage since they are moving backwards and are reacting to the movement of the offensive player just to try a stay in front of him. No one can move backwards as quickly as a player moving forward. These calls are handcuffing defenders and hurt the game by making harder to defend in favor of point production.

It seems to me that, half the time, the refs don't really know what to call but they feel like they have to call something. A no call would be better than making a guess. It's verges on being ridiculous at times and hurts the game.

Coach Les had a couple of interesting quotes in the Enterprise story about the game:

In regards to us not matching the 49ers physicality he said, “We knew they were going to be physical,” Les said. “I think J.T. really responded to the physicality and was active and aggressive. I didn’t think we had too many other guys running to the fight, and we’ve got to run to that fight a little bit better.”

Then when commenting on the terribly poor FT shooting he said: “Looking at our free-throw shooting, their free-throw defense was awfully good,” Les said. “At the end of regulation, we were 9 for 21. You can’t come on the road and put yourself in that kind of position. You’ve got to step up and make some free throws. If we do, we probably end this thing in regulation.”

The comment about the Long Beach FT defense being "awfully good" is pretty funny!

http://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/aggies-go-cold-in-ot-fall-short-in-long-beach/

This was a hard fought, tough loss for the Ags on the road. We had the lead 55-53 but Evan Payne hit a tough jumper with 2.6 seconds left to tie it up. Then Darius Graham just missed sinking a half court shot by inches and the game went into OT. In OT LB hit a couple of 3's and got the benefit of two horrible foul calls and the Ags found themselves down 8 real quick and never got closer than 5 after that.

The big difference in the game was LB's dominance in the paint and on the boards. They outscored the Ags 46-22 in the paint and garnered 15 offensive rebounds. Our interior defense just did not handle their physical inside play.

The game was a foul-plagued affair with the zebras whistling 56 total fouls of which 31 were on the Aggies. Both teams were miserable from the FT line with the Ags shooting only 17 0f 32 for 53% and LB was only 1% better shooting 54% on 14-26. If the Ags had shot their normal percentage from the line they would have won the game but the same can be said for The Beach as well.

Siler Schneider led the way for the Aggies coming of the bench to score 21 points followed by Bryton Lemar with 15 and JT with 12. However, Schneider had 6 TO's and Lemar had 5 and that's way too many for two guards to have. Temidayo Yussef muscled his way in the paint to lead the 49ers with18 points.

One big concern for the Aggies of late is the absence of offensive production from Chima Moneke. In the last 4 games Chima has only scored a total of 35 points for an average of 8.8 ppg far below the 15 ppg he had been averaging. He is still grabbing rebounds and making some emphatic blocks but his shooting has fallen off to 27.5% on only 8-29 from the floor. Chima has been demonstrably frustrated lately and we need him to get untracked and give us some needed help on offense if we are going to stay in the title hunt.

The Aggies need to shake this loss of and get ready to play hard against a tough Fullerton team on Saturday night. Hopefully, we'll come home with a split.

BTW, Coach Bob Williams finally got his 500th win and the Gauchos beat Hawai'i 56-54 on a tip in with one second left in the game. Congrats to Coach Williams!

The stars aligned for the Aggies tonight as they take care of business by beating Hawai'i 69-50 while Long Beach State got upset by Cal Poly 69-67. So the Ags are now in sole possession of first place in the Big West.

Morgan Bertsch was brilliant again and led the Ags with 24 points on 11-19 shooting. Pele Gianotti was terrific also with 20 points on 9-14 from the floor. As a team the Aggies shot 53%, won the boards by a 34-29 count, had 6 blocks and only 8 TO's.

This was an all around excellent outing by the Aggies.

LB runs away from the Ags in OT 78-69