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Home and Home with St. Mary's starting this season. First game in Calif. Return game in 2020-2021 Per Jon Rothstein

Okay. Nice to hear.

What does st Mary’s have coming back?

Per CBS top 25 and 1:

The Gaels are returning seven players who averaged at least 13 minutes per game last season - among them Jordan Ford, who averaged 21.1 points while shooting 41.2 percent from 3-point range. Saint Mary's should be good enough to provide Gonzaga with a real challenge in the WCC.

Ranked right behind us at #24. Chance for a big net rating plus with a road win there.

Really unfortunate that we couldn’t get them at home this year. Two possible top 25 teams in the spectrum would have been great. Glad it’s a home and home but this year would have been the preferred home game and st Mary’s got it. Of course you could argue a win there looks better on a resume.

Here's ESPN's take. St Mary's is ranked 19 (one spot below us, as they are at CBS.

The Gaels were barely in the NCAA tournament discussion entering the West Coast Conference tournament, but a win over Gonzaga in the title game put them in the dance -- and now Randy Bennett's team hopes to get back to the tournament in a more comfortable fashion. Jordan Ford is one of the nation's elite scoring guards despite struggling against Villanova in the first round. Malik Fitts is an inside-outside threat up front, and the Gaels return two other starters from last season's team. Saint Mary's campaign could come down to whether Aaron Menzies gets a redshirt to play next season -- and whether Cincinnati transfer Logan Johnson can play immediately.

Good get for both schools..

oleblu111 wrote: ↑

July 12th, 2019, 11:06 am

Home and Home with St. Mary's starting this season. First game in Calif. Return game in 2020-2021 Per Jon Rothstein

USU just demolished St. Mary’s in Moraga last season. They made a really good Gaels team look bad. It was probably one of the Aggies’ three or four best games last year, and made me realize that USU could be something special.

Let’s see if they can do it two years in a row.

dogie wrote: ↑

July 12th, 2019, 8:39 pm

oleblu111 wrote: ↑

July 12th, 2019, 11:06 am

Home and Home with St. Mary's starting this season. First game in Calif. Return game in 2020-2021 Per Jon Rothstein

USU just demolished St. Mary’s in Moraga last season. They made a really good Gaels team look bad. It was probably one of the Aggies’ three or four best games last year, and made me realize that USU could be something special.

Let’s see if they can do it two years in a row.

It was in Vegas not Moraga, but your point stands. That was the game I knew the Aggies had a special team and that Smith was the real deal. As good as Stew was, very few of his teams would have demolished a tournament level team on a neutral site in November like that.

Aggie formerly in Hawaii wrote: ↑

July 12th, 2019, 9:44 pm

dogie wrote: ↑

July 12th, 2019, 8:39 pm

oleblu111 wrote: ↑

July 12th, 2019, 11:06 am

Home and Home with St. Mary's starting this season. First game in Calif. Return game in 2020-2021 Per Jon Rothstein

USU just demolished St. Mary’s in Moraga last season. They made a really good Gaels team look bad. It was probably one of the Aggies’ three or four best games last year, and made me realize that USU could be something special.

Let’s see if they can do it two years in a row.

It was in Vegas not Moraga, but your point stands. That was the game I knew the Aggies had a special team and that Smith was the real deal. As good as Stew was, very few of his teams would have demolished a tournament level team on a neutral site in November like that.

That game was a bit of an outlier for both teams. SMC was clearly unprepared for Queta. They will have some kind of game plan to limit his impact this year. Obviously, he will still be a major factor, but the Gaels were completely shell-shocked in the first half. That won't happen again.

This will be a great game. I wish it was in Logan this year as that would be an awesome atmosphere. Still a good opportunity to get a quality Tier 2 or possibly Tier 1 victory on the road against a good opponent. St. Mary's should be really good, but I expect us to hopefully be better as well.

It is better for us that it is on the road, we have a chance at a great win with Sam and Queta, both are gone for the home game which means we will need the home court for that one.

Aggie84025 wrote: ↑

July 13th, 2019, 12:09 pm

This will be a great game. I wish it was in Logan this year as that would be an awesome atmosphere. Still a good opportunity to get a quality Tier 2 or possibly Tier 1 victory on the road against a good opponent. St. Mary's should be really good, but I expect us to hopefully be better as well.

I believe a Tier 1/Quadrant 1 Road game includes all games against teams ranked 1-75. Seems almost impossible that this will be anything less than a Tier 1 Road game.

ChicAggie wrote: ↑

July 13th, 2019, 1:16 pm

Aggie84025 wrote: ↑

July 13th, 2019, 12:09 pm

This will be a great game. I wish it was in Logan this year as that would be an awesome atmosphere. Still a good opportunity to get a quality Tier 2 or possibly Tier 1 victory on the road against a good opponent. St. Mary's should be really good, but I expect us to hopefully be better as well.

I believe a Tier 1/Quadrant 1 Road game includes all games against teams ranked 1-75. Seems almost impossible that this will be anything less than a Tier 1 Road game.

Correct. Quad 1 wins are those against teams 1-30 at home, 1-50 at neutral site, and 1-75 on road.

Would be really nice if some of our MWC counterparts could get in that top 75 range.

It would be fun to establish some kind of rivalry with them. Other than in-state schools, and maybe one or two Big West Schools (Irvince, Santa Barbara), I don't think there are any other schools that we've played more often in recent years. Why not keep it going? I also would love a series with New Mexico State. Good rivalry with a team that is in the tourney year in and year out.

I think OOC should go back where she came from.

USU78 wrote: ↑

July 15th, 2019, 3:24 pm

I think OOC should go back where she came from.

Well played, sir!

On a recent podcast, Smith said that scheduling has been extremely hard this year and just last week a team dropped they thought they had. I don't expect the schedule to be done anytime seen. Sounds like nobody wants to play us.

bpd wrote: ↑

July 16th, 2019, 11:27 pm

On a recent podcast, Smith said that scheduling has been extremely hard this year and just last week a team dropped they thought they had. I don't expect the schedule to be done anytime seen. Sounds like nobody wants to play us.

Not wanting to play a good mid-major makes some sense in football given downside risk. It makes no sense in college basketball, where more opportunities to get Q1and Q2 wins only helps a resume, and losses of that variety hurt very little.

This is pretty discouraging to hear, as it could drastically affect our seeding in what should be our best season in a long time.

Congrats to St. Mary’s for not being wieners. We should try to load up on other traditionally good mid-major programs.

Just pick up the phone Stew....err I mean Smith. Everyone must be dying to come play a top 25 team in Logan.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

ineptimusprime wrote: ↑

July 17th, 2019, 12:29 am

Not wanting to play a good mid-major makes some sense in football given downside risk. It makes no sense in college basketball, where more opportunities to get Q1and Q2 wins only helps a resume, and losses of that variety hurt very little.

This is pretty discouraging to hear, as it could drastically affect our seeding in what should be our best season in a long time.

Congrats to St. Mary’s for not being wieners. We should try to load up on other traditionally good mid-major programs.

The bigger problem seems to be that decent teams and P5's won't play on the road at all in OOC so we either play all of our games on the road or we play lower tier teams. Utah released their OOC schedule the other day and they have 1 road game on it (@ Nevada). This is why the pre-season tournament we get into each year is so critical. It gives as an opportunity to play good teams.

USU78 wrote: ↑

July 15th, 2019, 3:24 pm

I think OOC should go back where she came from.

AYE OH!

ProvoAggie wrote: ↑

July 17th, 2019, 8:29 am

ineptimusprime wrote: ↑

July 17th, 2019, 12:29 am

Not wanting to play a good mid-major makes some sense in football given downside risk. It makes no sense in college basketball, where more opportunities to get Q1and Q2 wins only helps a resume, and losses of that variety hurt very little.

This is pretty discouraging to hear, as it could drastically affect our seeding in what should be our best season in a long time.

Congrats to St. Mary’s for not being wieners. We should try to load up on other traditionally good mid-major programs.

The bigger problem seems to be that decent teams and P5's won't play on the road at all in OOC so we either play all of our games on the road or we play lower tier teams. Utah released their OOC schedule the other day and they have 1 road game on it (@ Nevada). This is why the pre-season tournament we get into each year is so critical. It gives as an opportunity to play good teams.

Then I say hold our nose and play some one-off roadies against some good P5 (or other) schools this season. We need all the chances we can get at Q1 and Q2 wins, and quality losses won’t hurt our seeding much.

ineptimusprime wrote:Then I say hold our nose and play some one-off roadies against some good P5 (or other) schools this season. We need all the chances we can get at Q1 and Q2 wins, and quality losses won’t hurt our seeding much.

What if these theoretical P5 schools don’t want to schedule a game in Logan or at their home against USU. They know their conference schedule and their invitational gives them enough to get into the Tourney, and can schedule either P5 teams or wins at home instead of interesting games against G5 teams. We also see a lot of teams back out of games that are scheduled in Logan. I wish the NCAA cared about this, but the selection committee encourages this type of scheduling by giving the benefit of doubt to P5 teams over everyone else.

@JonRothstein

Sources: Matchups for the 2019 Jamaica Classic are set.

LSU/Rhode Island
Utah State/NorthTexas

LSU/Utah State
Rhode Island/North Texas

So it's not a 3 game tournament? What happened to Nicholls State University and North Carolina A&T?

Blitz79 wrote: ↑

July 22nd, 2019, 5:47 pm

So it's not a 3 game tournament? What happened to Nicholls State University and North Carolina A&T?

I'm not sure on the tournament portion now but there will also be 2 on campus games. That's where we will most likely play Nicholls State and NCAT.