Well it's out of the frying pan and into the fire for the Aggies. Hawaii is arguably playing the best basketball of all the best BW teams at the moment. They're coming off winning their first ever Diamond Head Classic Tournament title with 3 impressive victories over Pepperdine, Washington State and SMU.

On the other hand the Aggies are coming off losses in their last two games: a disappointing loss at EWU followed by an "as good as could be expected effort" against highly ranked UCLA. It's been an up and down pre-conference season for the the Aggies and it feels like they have yet to play their best basketball with consistency.

Hawaii and the Aggies have established a solid rivalry of late with the games often getting quite physical and "spirited" in recent years. The Warriors are tough to beat on the island and they always have a loud and boisterous crowd behind them. There always seems to be a pretty good home court advantage for Hawaii when it comes to the 50-50 calls by the officials too. I expect the breaks will go Hawaii's way so the Aggies will need to just play on and not let any questionable calls or the crowd get into their heads.

I'd say the Ags are 10 point underdogs coming into tonight's game but I expect we'll put up a tough fight. We can't expect to fall behind early and catch up against a team like Hawaii. If they pull away early and get the crowd loudly behind them, we'll be hard pressed to close the gap. Our defense will need to be energetic and stout from the get go without getting into early foul difficulties also. Our offense has been hit and miss this season with some long periods of scoring drought at times so our defense must be tenacious all the time to help us stay within striking range if we go cold shooting the ball.

Go Ags!

I think that Hawaii, UCSB and Irvine are the odds on bets to be the front runners at this point for sure. Hawaii looked very good winning 3 tough games in their latest tournament. They haven't played away from home yet and, like Toke noted, they generally don't play nearly as well on the road.

At this point, I think we are a middle of the pack team. We have had stretches of brilliance that have given us glimpses of just how good we can be but we haven't been able to sustain that excellent level of play throughout the game. We've let big leads slip away too often which has turned potential routs into close wins or loses and that's a big concern. We've also had several games where our 3 point shooting and FT's were shockingly poor. The FT shooting has improved of late but the 3 point shooting is still not as good as it needs to be for us to be a more dangerous offensive team.

As with any Jim Les team, we thrive on defense and, when we are locked in, we can be very good. Our rebounding has been very good this year also despite us not having great size. I like how hard we play and how we can hang in there with bigger, physical teams too. We're not a timid team; we'll go nose to nose with anyone.

Early in the season, I thought that our depth would be a great benefit of this team and, although we're getting some good defensive minutes from a few players, we aren't seeing much scoring from our bench. I hope that improves in conference play.

I like the overall makeup of this Aggie team and I think we've yet to play our best basketball consistently. We need to be one of the best defensive teams in the league to make things tough for those teams who rely heavily on their offensive ability to win. Our tough defense can keep us within striking distance against those kind of teams when we go through periods of offensive drought.

Overall, I think we're capable of being up there competing with the top BW teams but it won't be easy. It will be a dogfight for us but we are certainly capable of putting up a good fight.

Go Ags!

Welp, I just tested positive and and I'm feeling like crap. Five people who we got together with last Wednesday are now positive and counting. The Covid Grinch has thrown a wrench into all of our holiday plans but we are still so very grateful for all the good fortune we have in our lives.

Be safe everyone and I hope you are having a joyous day!

Same to you and all of our forum members.

Unfortunately, Covid has hit our family and our friends after a get together Wednesday evening. A good friend called this morning and said she just tested positive so we tested and my wife is positive. We just heard from 3 other friends who have tested positive now also. My son and I are negative but we're wearing masks in the house now.

Covid is everywhere and being vaccinated isn't a guarantee that you won't get it but it does help you from getting seriously ill. If you are getting together with family and friends, play it safe be sure to test before hand.

Happy Holidays everyone and Go Ags in 2023!

I was hoping to beat the spread but the Bruins are too long, too quick and too athletic for the Aggies. They're a Top 10 team for a reason. We did about as well as we could against that kind of team. We missed a couple of bunny layups on a couple of occasions which I hope we don't do against the BW teams. Time to get ready for Hawaii.

I thought our defense played very well. We struggled on offense primarily due to the Bruins stout defense. Tough to make anything in the paint with their size. However, we missed quite a few of the the open shots we were able to get and we didn't seem to play with much confidence on offense. The Bruin defense is literally heads and shoulders above us. I'd like to see of play better on offense in the second half.

They did let a 15 point lead get away from them. However, the main reason they lost in the final 10 seconds was because of the 2 absolutely horrible foul calls by the officials which put NAU on the line for 4 FT's and they made all 4.

The last foul with 2.3 seconds left was incredibly wrong! The NAU player ran straight into Sidney Burns who was cutting across the court and knocked her down and the official called a foul on Burns. It's mind-boggling that the official would call Burns for that foul. Even the NAU player thought she had fouled Burns and was shocked that the call went against Burns. Jen Gross was livid and you certainly can't blame her.

It looks like Boston Stovall has an offer from Montana Tech. Interestingly, he has a full ride academic scholarship offer to Tuskegee University also.

Not surprised. I hope he does well there.

Ooops...wrong thread...

The Ags came into this game as one of the top 5 rebounding teams in the nation but EWU beat us on the boards today. The last time that happened was in our 10 point loss to LMU.

Very interesting for sure.

Unfortunately, I don't think you are wrong, Toke. We just haven't found any kind of consistency game to game or even half to half this year. We don't seem to be able to stretch a lead and keep it throughout the whole 40 minutes. We even lost a 29 point lead to Boston University in the final 16 minutes of the second half before winning in OT.

I feel like this team has the makings of a pretty good basketball team but something is missing or just hasn't gelled yet. I can't put my finger on it but something is not clicking. If the coaches don't get it figured out, I think we'll be hard pressed to be in the top half of the Big West.

We can't have a game like this against UCLA, Hawaii and Irvine and expect to have a chance to win. The Bruins will run us out of Pauley Pavilian and Hawaii is always hard to beat in Hawaii. We follow those two games up with our conference opener at home against Irvine who is perhaps the best team in the BW.

We've had 11 games now figure things out but we're still very inconsistent and that doesn't bode well for us in these next 3 very tough games.

I'll be pulling for us but I'm not real confident at the moment...

Ags lose 79-68.

I think this may be the poorest performance overall by the Aggies this year. You simply can not allow a team to shoot 10-18 from 3 while we go 3-20. Way too many break downs on defense also. Les will not be happy at all with this effort.

This one is slipping away. The Ags can't make a 3 (2-16) and EWU can't miss a 3 (9-15).

Our perimeter defense is MIA. EWU is 8-13 from 3 and the Ags are 2-15.

Ags can't get their offense going and are down 6 now. 57-61 with 9:27 to go.

Dreadful 3 point shooting by the Aggies 2-14 so far.

28-9 SDSU at the half. The temperature is 7 degrees and dropping.

37-35 Ags at the half. We had several opportunities to stretch the lead to double digits at times but poor 3 point shooting and lapses on defense allowed the Eagles keep it close. The offense has not found a good rhythm.