I'd rather have a kid like this transfer in from D3 than more than 1/2 the guys Sac has coming in.....

Recording a spring ball recap tomorrow with Scott Gordon.

I’ll read a few comments from here live on the POD if you guys post some. Maybe questions from those who couldn’t make it out to practice and feedback/ analysis from those that made any practices or the spring game

Mediocrity isn't being defended. Rash, knee-jerk responses to Sac State's actions are being rejected.

I agree about the need to improve the program. My point is that while Sac is making a lot of noise, it may just be noise.

A well known Bay Area QB’s kid played football at my son’s high school. When we did not start, he transferred to another high school. Apples do not always land at the base of the tree.
If I am correct, Shaq’s kid average less that 7 ppg more than I did last year.

New offer on ATH Landon Kalsbeck out of Littleton, CO! GO AGS!

This is a HIGH SCHOOL coach. He is a vanity hire. Can he lead and build a D1 program? Getting a few NBA players sons and transfers to come to your school is one thing......coaching a D1 basketball team and building a program is another.

Don't hold your breath if you are waiting for Davis to enact short-sighted publicity stunts like this....Davis moves deliberately with a long-term view.

Its important to note: athletics programs that operate like Sac don't give a crap about academics. So, maybe think about the brand you want to slap on your alma mater.

"We are definitely in on (Jaden) being our guy," Marion told CBS Sports. "For us in every room, we want guys who can be draft picks, starters and stars. In every room, if you look at what we are doing in the transfer portal and what we have done with high school recruiting, every single room had that. Except for the quarterback room, we did not upgrade to the level I liked."

I hope Sac schedules Fresno State soon and Conklin puts up 50 pts + 450 yards.

Nice to see Lan had a bidding war for him, in the end I think New England's situation is perfect for his skill set. What an opportunity.

Grant Harper was a Freshman that Spring. Hard to believe! 6 QBs in the spring that year. Great recruiting class by Hawkins & Co. - Lan, Teddye, CJ, Toki, Chubba, Bains...
...
https://ucdavisaggies.com/sports/football/roster/2020

Totally agree with this. He has won with talent & depth. Give him the resources he needs (and that other programs have).

This goes for any school in the UC system. No matter how anyone feels, athletics is never going to be a #1 priority in the UC system.

This doesn't make me any less of a fan, and it doesn't make me want the Athletics Department to work less hard to improve. There must be a winning standard in place.

In this context, I'm not sure replacing Jim Les immediately is the highest probability move for increased wins and program improvement.

Athletics never made our university “elite” or for that matter any other one. It’s totally supplementary. If by your metric Sac State is now “elite” then you should reassess your methodology.

If the student body isn't vested in the program now, does that merit a larger investment ? If the students don't come out, lack of interest is a big factor. If they aren't interested do you think the lack of winning is driving that, or could it be that they just don't care because they have bigger priorities ? You can try to make the games more appealing.. In the end though, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

These sports teams belong to the students first and foremost because they pay the student fees. If they aren't interested in supporting their teams because they'd rather blow bubbles/confetti, or share every aspect of their lives on social media, maybe it's time to re-evaluate the entire sports program and its cost to them. If they really are this indifferent no basketball team is going to change that. I'm not in favor of throwing more of someone else's money at a coaching experiment that may not deliver results. And how important is the basketball team's level of success anyway ? Worth losing sleep over ?

We look at these things through the perspective of alumni. It's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking the school owes us highly-competitive teams for life. The sports teams don't exist solely to provide entertainment for hard-to-please alumni. They do not owe us a championship basketball team. If they could find ways to sufficiently attract potential students and community participation/investment without a sports program I'd be ok with that.

Look, I enjoyed the sports as a student, but I also recognize that younger people don't share my interests, and the UCD athletics experiences I enjoyed as a student are never coming back. Fun memories-that's it. New memories can be formed but they will not be the same. Times change and so do priorities. Perhaps the athletics dept isn't tuned in enough to what the students want. It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other. It doesn't need to be "go-all-in" or get rid of the program. They've found a happy medium, and that's fine. Davis can be Davis, and Sac State can be Sac State.

Applying Storage Wars to this situation I think Sac State aspires to be like Renè (the 300-lb German guy with the busty wife). Perhaps his wife's breasts are a symbol of their ambitions ?

It's also possible they wind up like Barry, the old guy who blows so much of his family's money on crap lockers. Prior to these moves by Sac State, they were more like Mary, buying cheap lockers with the stated purpose of refurbishing things + re-selling them.

UCD is more like Ivy Calvin, the ex-college football player who runs Grandma's Attic. Ivy is really smart, rarely loses big, but he's rarely the biggest winner. Everything's ok except somebody keeps dumping old pee-stained mattresses at his shop.

You folks do know that Les isn't solely responsible for player performance, right ? The players themselves bear a greater share of that responsibility. He can only instruct them what to do to prepare (practice), what to during the game + when to do it. The execution is purely in their court (pun intended).

If the coaches are recruiting the all-county everythings they claim to be recruiting then it's not that they are recruiting inferior players. The players are good. Other teams have good players too, and this isn't like the D-II days when they could just out-smart the majority of the big dummies playing for the other teams (except for Bakersfield)

I know that as alumni we think our school is great and can accomplish anything, especially because it's very affirming when there is success. However, I only believe UCD can do that academically. Athletically there are more limits. Could another coach take the same players and turn them into a national powerhouse. No, because the players aren't THAT good.

The best recruiter in the world couldn't convince a lot of the best players to come to Davis if they don't want to be in a place like Davis. You know, free-will and that stuff. UCD is not the be-all-end-all of existence some alumni think it is. You could hire Michael Jordan as the coach with Larry Bird as his assistant and they still wouldn't sign. Well, to be fair, some of them might not be familiar with his career considering it was ancient history before they were even born.

Knowing that there is a ceiling and accepting that it exists puts things into perspective. A different coach might help them get a slightly closer look at it, but not significantly. I would say if Les were doing a horrible job or mistreating the players that would be one thing. He isn't though, so let the man finish providing the services for which he's receiving contractually-obligated payments. When it's over you can hire a new coach. Honestly, some of you folks act like money is no object when it's somebody else's. Are you going to foot the bill for termination costs ? You might as well all be CA politicians.

And keeping up with Sac State should also not be a huge goal. They may have a little more potential upward mobility because they're less-encumbered by academic requirements, and they are in a more interesting place.. And if they succeed-great. If they produce something fantastic I may go see it sometime because I'm not obligated to be a cheerleader of everything UCD for life.

if this was an episode of Storage Wars, it would be like Sac just bought every unit at auction based on what they could see peering in the door. Statistically some or even most are going to be junk but there’s also going to be some pay dirt. And we should not discount that raw talent in a go-go offense scheme has the potential to find itself in the end zone a lot - if they can play together. From what I understand, go-go doesn’t always favor a star player but does require everyone to protect whoever does end up with the ball.

In a 4-year recruiting cycle, people know there is competition and not everybody will start as a freshman. People transfer or find joy in ways other than starting. In this scenario of a whole team of 1-season guys, all of them must think they can be the guy this season, though this is numerically impossible. Can teamwork and discipline be maintained once people start realizing they transferred to keep another bench warm? Or will there be midseason desertions?

Wood didn’t deliver the PAC12, he hasn’t delivered on the promised stadium. They have to deliver a season that is both winning and entertaining to keep momentum alive.

I am used to loyalty to those that have stuck with us. I am not used to constant turnover. If someone new has success here, they will more likely leave ala Sac State. Look, if we can become a Duke or Bama (of old) sure, let’s do it. But if we become a Umass or a Kent State then no.

They are fortunate to not be finishing against the top teams in the conference. Of their last 3 BW series (counting the one they're in) only UCSD has a winning record. There's really not much of a path to 5th place for the Aggies, so no ticket to the Big West tournament. As a result their season will end a week earlier this year.

They get locked in a fair number of these low-scoring wars of attrition because the team hitting isn't very good (.250 batting average is pretty weak considering aluminum bats are being used). It seems like all of the returning players except Nick Leehey (who seems to have missed significant time with injury), Ryan Lee, and Braydon Wooldridge are not hitting as well as they did last year. I wonder what's behind that-rule changes (such as an adjustment to the strike zone) ? A change in team hitting approach ? They do seem to be drawing more walks. I seriously doubt all of them went into a prolonged slump at the same time for no reason.

I'm not concerned with the freshmen. Players like Gentil, Story, and Houston Hirschkorn have shown some real promise. I seem to recall there was a game in which Gentil had two triples. He's a catcher. Catchers usually aren't supposed to be hitting triples !

These statistics are a little telling though. UCD has been shut out SEVEN times this year, to go with 8 times they scored only 1 run. In those 15 combined games they are (2-13) and scored 8 total runs.

What's really weird is the team batting average has been at or near .250 each year since Nicholson took over as head coach (per the historical stats on the UCD website). They hit .238 in 2022 but probably would have hit .250 had the hazing scandal not resulted in some of their regulars ditching the program. So this year is- consistent ?

One crucial element they've mostly been lacking is power. Seventeen team homeruns would've been ok in the D-II days. Homeruns end these types of games much faster than piecemeal offense (walks, getting hit with pitches, etc). They hit 33 last year and the year before that. Must be missing Damian Stone more than they imagined. He was the only major bat they lost to graduation last year. Seventeen is how many they hit in '22 (6-34 won-loss record). The 2022 Aggies hit that many in 5 fewer games.

Pitching, on the other hand, has improved significantly. The team ERA alone has dropped a lot in each of the last 3 years.

It is amazing what a college athletic program can accomplish when they are not concerned with…you know…college.

I don’t think the players or the coach particularly care about playoffs or championships. They are assembling 100 guys looking for a last best stop to build or rehab their personal brand and highlight reel to hopefully get noticed by a pro league or P4 school that may be a better ticket to a pro career. In essence they are playing for themselves, not Sac State. The upside for Marion is to demonstrate ability to engineer an immediate turnaround because he is already auditioning for his next gig. Assuming he doesn’t flame out, he’s one or two year max at Sac. When a P4 school next fires a coach, immediate turnaround at any cost is the service they will be looking to buy. What Wood is betting the farm on, is can all of these mercenaries with their own motivations be leveraged as a coherent team long enough to make Sac look like a viable FBS contender. My guess is that everyone involved has a max 1-2 year horizon. And perhaps Marion is just an early adopter of the new world order. It’s kind of a Silicon Valley approach - move fast, break things, ignore messes and consider humans as commodity resources instead of individuals.

When interviewed on the Big Mountain podcast, Rocco said that UCD was going to honor its commitment to all athletes currently on rosters next year. They would opt in the following year.

That was before the judge in the House case indicated that she wanted athletes currently on rosters grandfathered in. The NCAA and the major conferences (the defendants) are not in favor of that, but the alternative is going to trial before the same judge.

Same as football: Sac is very likely to surpass us in performance on the field/court (Not courtroom.) in the short-term by prioritizing flash and form. How this works is if they can generate enough revenue to do actual facilities upgrades to create a sustained recruiting and donor base. Have gone through the recruiting process recently with my kids, facilities are huge factors in decisions. Sac’s facilities suck compared to most FCS/mid-majors and it takes big money and time to address that.