Aggies Release 2009-2010 Basketball Schedule

The Aggies released their 2009-2010 basketball schedule today.

The non-conference home slate looks to be pretty lousy, but they make up for it with a couple of great road trips.

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/tam/sports/m-baskbl/auto_pdf/2009-10Schedule.pdf

The non-conference home schedule includes visits from:
Angelo State
Samford (not Stanford, but Samford)
Prairie View A&M
Akron
North Texas
The Citadel
Northwestern State

The three best road trips of the pre-conference schedule include games at:
76 Classic in Anaheim (vs Clemson, either West Virginia or Long Beach, and either UCLA, Portland, Butler or Minnesota)
vs. New Mexico in Houston (Toyota Center)
at Washington (Seattle)

The highlight of the conference portion of the schedule is a Big Monday matchup vs. Kansas on February 15th.

The good guys will be featured on ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU at least 10 times.

I hope you guys are all having a great summer.

-sb

UConn Preview - 2:35 Central Time - CBS

The Aggies take on the mighty UConn Huskies tomorrow in 2nd round action from Philadelphia. Attached you will find our full breakdown of the matchups in the game.

I show the Aggies losing a close game here, but I want the record to reflect that I certainly will not be surprised if the Aggies upset the Huskies. UConn is clearly the better team and it's really not even close. I just think that the Aggies present some interesting problems for UConn. The team that had the most success against Jim Calhoun's bunch this year was PItt behind their dominant big man and two really good guards. The Aggies have some bodies to throw at UConn on the defensive end and if they can manage to knock down a few shots they can certainly hang around and give themselves a shot. I think Roland for sure, and to a lesser extent any combination of Sloan/Harris/Holmes will be enough to keep the UConn perimeter players on edge for most of the game.

Jay Bilas (ESPN & CBS) who will be calling the game tomorrow has said through multiple media outlets this week that he thinks that Mark Turgeon's motion offense, which relies heavily on ball-screens will cause UConn some major problems. His basis for this is that Turgeon uses his big men to step out and set screens for the guards when they have the biscuit in their hands. Doing so will cause Hasheem Thabeet to have to step out of the lane, thus opening up more channels for the Aggies to seek a path to the basket.

One other thing to keep an eye on is that UConn basically has 6 guys that take up a great portion of their minutes/production. For the most part they have zero bench. The Aggies on the other hand have 7 guys that could start and then another 2 that can come off the bench and produce at a high level.

One final quote from Donald Sloan I want you guys to hear - I love reading these kinds of things in the paper:
"Well, you know, like coach said, we came here to win two. It's all fine and dandy that we do have one right now. But we won't lose our focus. Just to get one, that's not good enough. That's not what we came here for."

Anyway, take a look at the attached PDF for our full breakdown and score prediction.

It should be a heck of a game tomorrow - I hope you all can find time to watch. Wouldn't it be something if the Aggies can be the first team to send shockwaves through the bracket.

Beat The Hell Outta UConn.

Carry on.
-sb

Aggies Stomp BYU - UConn Up Next!

Well, well, well - Look who has won their 4th straight opening round NCAA tournament game!!!! By crushing BYU the Aggies remained in a very select group of teams who have won at least one game each of the last 4 years. This time, they left little doubt from the opening tipoff. The Aggies made their first 10 field goal attempts and stormed out to a 26-8 lead and absolutely overwhelmed BYU en route to the 79-66 win.

The Aggies only trailed once at 0-3 before stepping on the throttle for the next 39+ minutes. The charge was lead by Bryan Davis who had a monster day in scoring 21 points and grabbing 9 rebounds. Four other Aggies managed to score in double digits as well (Carter 10, Roland 10, Sloan 14 and Holmes 10).

The Aggies were awesome on the defensive end forcing BYU to shoot a well-below average 39% from the field. They also held BYU sharpshooter Jonathan Tavernari to only 9 points on 3-of-9 shooting. Finally, you can't ignore the fact that only 6 players from BYU managed to score against the Aggies. That's pretty darn strong.

It was great to see the Aggies come out and throw down for 40 minutes and put together a complete game on the big stage.

Up next for the Aggies are the mighty UConn Huskies on Saturday afternoon. I'll drop a couple of links for you guys below and let you read more about the BYU win. I have to get started tonight on breaking down the UConn game for you guys. Tipoff time has not yet been announced by CBS for the game on Saturday. For entertainment purposes, the Aggies are listed as 10 point underdogs to UConn.

Brent Zwerneman's article can be found here:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/6319687.html

The AP article can be found here:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=294000002

A good read/blog from CNNSI.com
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/
andrew_lawrence/03/19/byu.texasam/index.html?eref=T1

Carry on.
-sb

BYU Preview - 11:30am CBS

OK - Attached is our preview of tomorrow's BYU game.

Do you have a score prediction? Let us know, post it as a comment on the blog.

Outside of the attached PDF file - I want to give you two thoughts.

1.) Why BYU will win:

BYU will beat the Aggies because the Cougars' top three players (Fredette, Cummard and Tavernari) are bettter than the Aggies' top three players (Carter, Sloan and Davis)

2.) Why Texas A&M will win:

Texas A&M will win because the Aggies' top 8 players (Carter, Sloan, Roland, Elonu, Davis, Harris, Holmes and Loubeau) are better than the Cougars' best 8 players.

BYU has no bench whatsoever and if the Aggies can force pressure on Fredette, Cummard and Tavernari it will be a good day for the Maroon and White.

I can't wait for tomorrow!!!!!!

Here's to hoping we have some good things to say tomorrow after lunchtime.

-sb

Mar. 16 Poll Submission

Rank	Team
1	Louisville
2	Memphis
3	Pittsburgh
4	Connecticut
5	North Carolina
6	Duke
7	Villanova
8	Missouri
9	Michigan St.
10	Wake Forest
11	Kansas
12	Washington
13	Oklahoma
14	Syracuse
15	Purdue
16	Gonzaga
17	UCLA
18	Florida St.
19	Clemson
20	Marquette
21	Louisiana St.
22	Butler
23	Arizona St.
24	Xavier
25	Utah

Aggies To Face BYU In The 1st Round

The Aggies enter the 2009 NCAA Tournament as a 9 seed in the West region (game played in Philadelphia) where they will face BYU (for the 2nd straight year) in their first round game on Thursday. The game time will be announced Sunday night / Monday morning. If they can manage to beat BYU they will likely play UConn as they are the 1 seed on the same side of the bracket.

BYU finished the year with a 25-7 record overall and 12-4 in the Mountain West conference. BYU's worst losses were to UNLV (twice) and San Diego State. Their best win was over Utah. Their resume is fairly strong, but their best non-conference win was over either Utah State or Tulsa. My initial thought is that I like the round 1 matchup, but I hate being on the same side as UConn. Let's hope that they can get past BYU and facing UConn would be a nice problem to have.

I do find it very odd that the committee put A&M and BYU head-to-head in consecutive years.

We will have a full preview of the game for you this week and we'll breakdown each of the individual matchups.

The Aggies are only one of just eight schools (Georgetown / Memphis / North Carolina / Pittsburgh / Tennessee / Texas / Texas A&M / UCLA) that have advanced past the first round of the NCAA Tournament in each of the last three seasons, and they will look to keep that string alive this year if they can get past BYU.

Other teams from the Big 12 that were awarded bids today were:
Oklahoma State (8) vs. Tennessee (9)
Texas (7) vs. Minnesota (10)
Missouri (3) vs. Cornell (14)
Oklahoma (2) vs. Morgan State (15)
Kansas (3) vs. North Dakota State (14)
Can you believe that the Aggies are playing in their 4th consecutive NCAA tournament?

Crazy.

OK - We'll have much more for you before Thursday.

Carry on.
-sb

Semifinal Update + Baylor Impact

Here are a couple of quick notes from yesterday's semifinal games + what a potential win by Baylor would mean.

Baylor vs. Texas
The Baylor Bears kept their miracle run alive by taking down the UT Longhorns yesterday by a final score of 76-70. The Bears were down 33-39 at the break but came out and took it right at Rick Barnes' team and outpaced them 43-31 in the second half. The game was pretty tight up until about the 2:00 mark when Baylor started to put the game away.

Baylor beat UT for only the first time in their last 25 games and the win puts the #9 seeded team in a position to win the tournament for the first time ever. On a sidenote - Baylor has won 3 games in 3 days; it took them their 13 previous games to win 3 as they finished the conference slate going 3-10 over those last 13 games.

Baylor was led by Kevin Rogers 20 points while Henry Dugat added 17 off the bench. A.J. Abrams led the Longhorns with 20 points.

Missouri vs. Oklahoma State
The Tigers and Cowboys put on a horrible display shooting the basketball last night as both teams combined to go 10-for-55 from behind the three point arc. In the end, Missouri was able to put away the Pokes by a final score of 67-59 to advance to today's final game vs. Baylor.

OSU was slowed down in the first half by Byron Eaton's ankle injury (he did return after halftime) and James Anderson's foul trouble in the 2nd half. Missouri, who also did not play well, at all, was able to make a few shots down the stretch and put the game on ice.

OSU was led by James Anderson's 20 points and 9 rebounds. Missouri was led by Zaire Taylor who scored 19.

Baylor Impact
Easily the question I was asked more than anything since Baylor's stunning win over Texas was "If Baylor wins, do they take the Aggies' spot?" The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT. The Big 12 does not have a finite number of spots and they are a lock to get at least 6 teams in (Kansas, OU, Missouri, Texas, OSU, Texas A&M). If Baylor upsets Missouri tonight, Baylor will take a spot from one of those "last 4 in" type of teams. It's not as if the committee will take the Aggies and drop them past 8 or 9 less deserving teams in favor of Baylor's automatic-bid status. They will take one of the final teams to squeak in (Maryland, Creighton, St. Mary's, San Diego State) and pull them back out and put Baylor into their place. It would be wild if Baylor pulls the upset and the league does end up getting 7 teams in.

OK - That's it for now. The Bears and Tigers play in the championship game today at 5:00 from the Ford Center. The game will be broadcast on ESPN and I'm sure if you wanted to go, you could walk up to the arena and pay $5 to sit anywhere you wanted.

Happy Saturday.

Carry on .
-sb