USD has 5 players 6’10 or taller...wow...

How will the cold weather affect the game? Will the cold make throwing and catching the ball more difficult? Is a cold football hard as a rock and therefore more difficult to hang onto?

Another preview and prediction: Ags 31 EWU 24

http://www.fcs.football/cfb/story.asp?i=20181107120414203482004&ref=rec&tm=&src=FCS

Wonderful Stats FCS Football podcast interview with Hawkins:

https://herosports.com/fcs/football-uc-davis-dan-hawkins-eastern-washington-ajaj

Hawk, "You gotta set the bar high..."

I thought the student turn out for the USF game was fair and a block of them were chanting cheers even though the game was long over for the Ags. After what they saw I fear they won't be back right away. Hopefully, giving away free pizza will lure a few back to the Pavilion.

That's for sharing your experiences. I think the article made the point that the parents who chose to have their kids play on traveling squads did so out of their concern for what was best for their children and you make some good points about the merits of doing so. I think it is of concern that participation in youth sports is down especially at lower income levels and many of the kids that come from those families are being left behind.

I thought the example of how successful Norway has been in their unique way funding youth sports along with their philosophy of participation is certainly a model worth looking at. It could help ameliorate the problem we are seeing with the haves and the have nots in American youth sports.

Yes, Stanford is long and physical and they're defense made things very difficult for the Ags. That said, as you noted, we tended to rush our shots and we shot poorly from 3. We needed to shoot a much higher percentage from 3 to stay within striking distance. We also put up some wild shots in close that should have been easy scores.

Bertsch carried the team in the first quarter. I'm a little concerned that we got so little contribution from the bench. We don't have the shooters we had last year with Nafekh, Gianotti and Nagel and we miss their maturity and poise at the moment. Hall and Bessolo will have to step up and bring some of that poise that was missing against Standford and, consequently, the TO's and rushed shots.

Hall and Bessolo are both very athletic but both can tend to rush things and miss opportunities as a result. If Nina makes a mistake or misses an open shot badly she will, at times, follow that up with a bad, quick foul in the back court as her frustration gets the better of her. She needs to be one of the leaders of this team, control her emotions better and play with more poise in situations like that.

There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that still need to come together and a team like Stanford can expose a team's shortcomings quickly as they did with the Ags last night. There is talent on this team but it will take some time for the players to gel, understand their roles and create a good chemistry. Right now we look a bit raw and out of sync.

Now if Gross can only snag a couple of UConn and Stanford quality recruits!

This is really interesting:

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) -- In May, Tara VanDerveer brought UC Davis coach Jennifer Gross and top assistant Joe Teramoto to campus for a third time to teach the Cardinal the Princeton offense. They spent seven hours instructing the Hall of Fame coach, who then treated them to a night in San Francisco for the big assist.

Six months later Stanford used all of that knowledge to beat the Aggies.

"I told Jen before the game, `If we play well it's a credit to you," VanDerveer said. "... I almost felt like I was playing my sister. We're learning from the best."

More here: https://gostanford.com/news/2018/11/8/womens-basketball-opening-statement.aspx

Jen Gross comments on the game:

"I thought we competed pretty well for the first half, but we've still got a lot of growing to do with this team," Head Coach Jennifer Gross said. "Our goal was to compete for 40 minutes. I thought we competed well in stretches, but we still have some work to do. Our team knows our mission is just to get better every single day and that's what we're going to continue to do."

"Stanford is really long, they're tough to score on, and they've got great length at every single position," Gross said. "I thought our offense was flowing a lot better in the first half. I thought we got pretty stagnant in the second half and were trying to take really tough shots. Part of that is Stanford's defense is really good, they were pressuring us a little bit."

"Everybody was disappointed, obviously, with the result, but we have a group that's really hungry to get better and there wasn't a lot of moping. It was 'hey, let's get back to work tomorrow' and we'll continue to get better and, hopefully, we can pick up a 'W' on Sunday."

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2018/11/7/womens-basketball-record-tying-night-for-bertsch-leads-aggies-at-no-7-stanford.aspx

Stanford routs the Ags 71-43. So both the men and the women have had very rough starts. While the women will not be happy with their performance, I don't think it was unexpected whereas the way the men lost was shocking.

Stanford has too much size and athleticism for the Aggies to handle and essentially took away everything inside. They outscored the Ags 38-12 in the paint and won the boards 50-25. The Ags had to settle for 3's and they only knocked down 8 of 31. Live by the 3, die by the 3.

There's a lot of work to be done if this team is going to contend for the Big West title. They have big shoes to fill with the loss of Gianotti, Nafekh and Nagel. This trio was poised, confident and deadly shooters. Tonight the Ags got only 11 points from their bench and 5 of those came in the final minute when both teams cleared their benches.

Stanford is running away with it. 57-34 after the 3rd.

I miss 6th on the forum.

36-24 Stanford at the half. Jen Gross can not be happy with her team so far. Sloppy play (13 TO's) and sub-zero shooting 23%...it's a small miracle they are within 12. Stanford does not look head and shoulders better than the Ags; it's just poor play by the Aggies so far.

The Ags are really missing Nagel, Nafekh and Glianotti as no one can hit a 3 other than Bertsch and McKeown who are 2-2 each...everyone else is 1-13.

17-14 Stanford after one quarter. The Ags are staying close despite some sloppy play...7 TO's already. Morgan Bertsch has 9.

The size we have this year is very typical of Les teams. In fact, with Neufeld at 6'11, Russell at 6'10, John at 6'8, Underwood at 6'8 and Goode at 6'7 we have more size that we normally do. Les tends to build his teams around guards first and foremost.

I'm going to say that the mess we saw last night was a perfect storm of everything thing that could go wrong went wrong. I'm not sure we could play any worse. Last year, as far as scoring goes, TJ averaged 14.8 ppg and Siler averaged 13.9 and those are decent numbers. AJ John came on late last year and ended up averaging 7.9 but I would expect more from him this year if he can overcome his leg injury.

We don't know that much about our newcomers but Stephan Gonzalez looks like he can put up some numbers and Matt Neufeld looks like he is agile enough to score in the paint if he can stay out of foul trouble.

We need to shut the door on that miserable performance against USF and focus on playing hard nosed defense and cohesive offense against San Diego on Friday. The Torreros were picked to finish ahead of USF in the WCC preseason poll so, if we don't make some big changes by Friday, we could see us get blown out again.

As many of you on the forum can tell I'm a big Aggie basketball fan too. I'm loving all the well-deserved excitement around the football team and, even though we laid a rotten egg in the opener last night, if you get the time, show some love for the men's and women's basketball teams and post up your thoughts as well. I'm not trying to dampen the football party...just trying to pump up some basketball interest as well...

It amazing how far Hawkins has taken this program in just his second year. If that doesn't get him FCS Coach of the Year I don't know what will. The team and the forum has a pulse again!

The lead for Hawk is up to 61 votes!