Aggies dam the River...side

Little did the UCR athletes and staff realize that the low intermitten rumbling in the DGS Spectrum was actually the entire Aggie team... asleep. About 10 minutes into the contest more and more Aggie players awoke to a 9 point deficit and were able to stave off a near disaster.

With the first tip UCR had momentum and energy and basically ran circles around an unorganized, lackadaisical Aggie squad. It was as if the team took the court under the impression that we were already 20 points up. For the first 10 minutes our offense and defense had a few moments where the players looked interested, but they soon faded and UCR would push the lead out again.

In comes Mike Stowell. I'm not saying he won the game for us, or that his box score was amazing. What I am saying is that it was while he was in the team finally woke up and started playing some good ball on both ends. We made a huge run which managed to erase their lead and send us to the locker room up by 3. Not the lead you'd expect when the Vegas line was about 15 points more than that, but it could have been much worse.

Stew's halftime speech was effective as the Aggies opened with 6 straight points, gave up a bucket and then scored 7 more. UCR had several stretches where they failed to generate much offense, and the Aggies capitalized, making repeated runs to extend the lead. Later in the 2nd half UCR hit a 3 to cut the lead to 12, but that's as close as they ever got. The Aggies answered with another run (triggered by defense) to put them away for good.

Carter, the BW's leading scorer and 2nd leading rebounder in league games, was held to 10 points on 5-11 shooting and just 2 boards. The crowd got on him late, and like Fullove, he tried to overcompensate and it hurt his game. The outcome was basically decided by then, but it was yet more evidence as to the effectiveness of the Aggie crowd in getting in opponents heads. Stew commented on how fun it was to see the crowd do that. He hoped aloud that the opponents leading scorer would keep doing dumb things in Logan to get the crowd's attention. Let's hope that more than the announced 7,000 show up on Saturday to see us against a surprising and athletic Fullerton squad.

The game saw no less than 10 Aggie dunks, with Butler getting an Oop from Brown on the break, another Oop on a set play and a follow on a miss by DP on the break. Nelson had a nice 2-handed flush that I believe he was fouled on (no call). While dunks are still just worth 2 points, they do get the crowd excited and you just can't complain about the high percentage shots. Most of the dunks were on the break which was the result of several steals. UCR had 18 turnovers which we turned into 27 points! How do you recover from that?

The players:

Spencer Nelson was his usual self. He tallied up his predictable box score of 14 points (5-5) and 12 rebounds with 2 assists. He only had 2 fouls in his 25 minutes, which must have been refreshing for him. Nelson was part of an inside game that just slaughtered UCR. He got a lot of easy put-backs as UCR's zone prevented them from effectively boxing our active big-men out. Nelson managed to drain another 3 tonight (nothing but net) so we may see this worked into sets in the future. He has nice touch and it's easily within his range.

DP got his groove on at home... again, pouring in a game-high 18 (7-12) and grabbing 5 boards. It was a very quiet 18 points, which I suggest is how his first 18 points ought to be. He saw instant double-teams when the ball rotated his way, but his patience and steals (2) fed his offense and he earned the rest at the line. (4-6) He was part of a 45 point performance from our 3 big men.

Nate Harris was a bucket away from breaking his career high. He finished with 13 points (5-7) and again showed his uncanny ability to score in the middle amongst the trees. I realize he's 6'7" with shoulders, but even in heavy traffic he can score the ball with either hand from 5' and in. He had a really nice twisting base-line shot he hit from about 10' while fading away. I didn't hear him call glass, but the ref signalled the scorers table and it went in the books, so he must have. He had 5 boards and played 22 minutes.

Butler played above the rim again. He had 6 points on 3-5 shooting. All three makes were dunks. If he can straighten out his jumper, he'll become unguardable.

Stowell and Evans had nice contributions off the bench. They had 7 and 15 minutes respectively. I really liked their efforts on D. Stowell had a nice strip, pushed the break and Evans worked the glass hard. The box score doesn't show how much they added to the game.

TJ only chipped in 6 points, but he added 3 boards and a game high 5 assists. He was always running hard on the break to test UCR's recovery. He played a smart game and didn't force anything that I can recall.

Mark Brown again led the team in minutes played (30). He was the one that kept our offense on the radar screen during the early lull. He also had 5 assists, played solid D and finished with 10 points

We had 4 players in double figures for the 5th straight game after not having that happen even once in any of the previous games. The balanced scoring is helping to drive the team's scoring average up, but still keeping the game within the scope of Stew's offense. That means the team's defense isn't suffering for the sake of scoring. We outrebounded UCR by 9 on the game, but that was due to a tremendous 2nd half effort. We ended up shooting 54% as a team, but only 59% from the line. UCR shot 42% from the floor and under 30% from three land.As Stew put it, the team played 28 minutes of pretty good basketball.

It's time to look forward to the game with Fullerton on Saturday. The Titans are reportedly the most athletic team in the BW this year, so the matchups should be very fun to watch. I'm hoping for a quicker start, but expect to see the Aggies continue their in-conference dominance in exciting fashion.

See You There!

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