Topsy turvy Big West again. I watched the first half of the UCR Hawai'i game. Both teams have talent. Riverside was playing without 2 players that I guess the coach benched for "violating team rules." Pretty impressive win for Riverside playing short-handed.

Hawai'i has a big advantage in recruiting when you can tell an athlete to come and play ball with us in paradise. Hard to compete with that!

I'm not sure what you are referring to Movie..?

It is amazing to me just how much Kevin Blue has accomplished in such a short amount of time. I hope he will stay here a while or, even better, just fall in love with this great school and decide this is a good place to stay for a very long time.

I hope so. He seems like a really solid young man and a great athlete as well.

Wow...sounds like the young man is very undecided...

I have the same question. It seems that it is necessary to put out a lot more offers than you have scholarships since you are not going to land everyone you offer. But, say you need 3 DB's and put out 7 DB offers in hopes of landing 3. Then what happens all of them accept? Now you have 4 less total scholarships to go around to fill other position needs. How do the coaches manage that something like that so that they get their needs filled at all the necessary positions?

There is an excellent picture of all 3 of the Aggie helmets on Coach Nurse's twitter page: https://twitter.com/CoachWesNurse

I remember reading someplace that, although the Ivies don't give athletic scholarships, they do other things that can make it more reasonable financially for their athletes. I guess Harvard changed the rigor of their academic standards and now admits athletes they used to not be able to recruit. These changes have made Harvard, Yale and Princeton very competitive in many sports.

Apparently we cast a pretty wide net. Here's a player Summerville, Georgia, that ESPN shows we offered but he committed to Charlotte: Michael Adams, 6'0 297 DT

http://www.espn.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/player/_/id/220561/michael-adams

Nice recap Toke69. It may be a rebuilding year for Hawai'i but they always seem to reload rather than rebuild. There is a definite advantage to recruiting when you can offer up a little bit of paradise as a perk for playing basketball for Hawai'i.

I was impressed with Hawai'i's interior passing and their pick and roll cuts to the basket. We had no answer to those plays but, like you said, Hawai'i blew lots of lay ups and would have won if they had made 2/3's of those.

Chima is as athletic as anyone we have ever had in an Aggie uniform and, I agree, he may be the best big man we have ever had even though he is only 6'6. He plays much taller because of his great leaping ability. He's also very strong and quick and has a good nose for the ball. When he made that put-back slam in the second half his elbow was above the rim. That was as good a slam as I have ever seen a Aggie make. It was right up there with a put-back dunk that Garrison Goode made earlier this year.

Brynton Lemar is playing with confidence and leadership. I think he is playing his best basketball ever right now. His FT's in the final seconds have won us several games this year. That said, the Ags are very inconsistent at the line and Garrison Goode is shooting in the 30% range from the charity stripe! I hope Coach Les makes the whole team shoot 100 FT's at every practice because we are leaving way too many points at the line.

Darius Graham is the motor that drives the team. His senior leadership is on display every game. His two 3's late in the game were critical and his showed confidence and courage lofting up those two, deep beauties.

I like the way Lawrence White is playing also. He knows his role primarily as a great defender and rebounder but he can also score with a variety of shots. He's just a great team player who plays without fear. JT is coming around but just seems to get into foul trouble so quickly. He has great character and courage and he is an inspiration to the team. I also think that Siler Schneider is giving us good minutes and has the ability to catch fire from deep. Arell Hennings is also giving us some solid help at the point too.

The team is playing pretty solid all together right now and the game Saturday against UC Irvine should be a dandy. Irvine is, without a doubt, the top team in the Big West. They absolutely destroyed CSUN 105-73 last night in the Matadome. A packed Pavilion and an inspired Aggie team could make things very tough for the Anteaters. It should be a good one!

Aggie play one of their best games of the season and beat Hawai'i 76-70. Chima Moneke had a monster game with 26 points and 13 rebounds followed by Brynton Lemar with 18 and some clutch FT's at the end. Huge win for the Aggies!

Lots of Aggies stepped up when they needed a big play. Lawrence White hit a big 3 with under a minute left and, earlier, Darius Graham het back to back deep 3's to help maintain the lead down the stretch. This was a really fun game to watch and the lead pretty much stayed in the 1 to 3 point range throughout the second half,

Irvine destroyed CSUN to remain undefeated in the BW and they come to the Pavilion for the second game of a double header next Saturday. I hope we pack the place as the Ags try to tie for the lead in the BW.

The Ags are locked up in a barnburner and lead 59-57 with 7:41to go.

Hawaii leads the Aggies 33-32 at the break in a fast paced, hard fought first half. The Ags are having some trouble stopping the Hawai'i's cutters and drive penetration. They've got some players with a very quick first step off the dribble. Luckily for the Ags, Hawai'i has blown a bunch of point blank looks. Hopefully, the Ags will be able to stay close and have a chance to win at the end.

Ho...flashly helmet!

That's certainly a possibility PA but the 49ers do a better job of keeping their poise under pressure and execute when it counts the most. The Ags need to learn to do the same.

Another big factor in this game is that LB continually brought in fresh players to keep the pressure up on defense and their bench outscored the Ags 27-6. LB didn't play particularly well on offense (4-22 from 3) but they play hard for a full 40 minutes.

This one hurts folks. The Aggies blew a 9 point lead in the 4th quarter and lost for the 2nd time this year to Long Beach 64-62 after a foul was called on Morgan Bertsch on a scramble for the ball on the floor and LB hit both FT's with 1.8 seconds left. On the ensuing inbound play in the forecourt, the Aggies threw the ball away. Game over.

The Aggies again failed to take care of the basketball when it counted and had two critical unforced TO's while relinquishing their late lead. Instead of going up by 11 or 12, the Ags turned the ball over.

All in all, it was a hard fought game but the 49ers are quicker than the Aggies and out hustled the Ags on the 50-50 balls. The story of the game though is that the 49ers scored 25 points off Aggie TO's while the Ags got just 4 of the same. You can not give up 25 points off TO's and win against good teams.

Now the Aggies must hope that someone else can take down the 49ers. Losing twice to The Beach may come back to haunt the Aggies at the end of conference play. It's too bad because the Aggies are every bit as good as Long Beach but failed to execute at crunch time.

53-51 Aggies after 3. This one is a battle royale and it looks like it will go down to the wire.

37-36 Aggies at the half. Morgan Bertsch nailed a long 3 pointer at the buzzer to give the Ags a one point lead. The Aggies did not play well in the second quarter and were out hustled by the 49ers.

As they did in the first game against each other, Long Beach is playing very physical inside and have pretty much taken Bertsch out of the game. They are playing her tight and tough and are willing to foul her hard rather than let her score so the Ags have been settling for long 3's and only shooting 6 of 17 from downtown. The big difference in the game though is that LB has 17 points off Aggie TO's and the Ags have 0 against the 49ers.

The Ags must take better care of the ball and be more patient on offense if they are going to be a a position to win at the end of this game.

The Aggies lead by 5 22-17 at the end of the first quarter in a game being played at a furious pace.