Friday, March 1, 2019

Sports Journal February 19-28, 2019

2-19-19
Lacking a Thursday game this week, the Aggie Men’s Basketball team scheduled a DII game on Tuesday versus the Texas A&M International Dust DevilsJack Nixon and Justin Hawkins were not entirely taking this game seriously during the radio coverage.  They got into a discussion about Eli Chuha’s real height.  Jack claimed he was 6’11”, if you counted his upstanding hair. 

It was already 11-3 Aggies at first timeout.  Coach Jans put in put five subs.  The Aggies are pretty deep.  The Dust Devils only had eight players with them, because of a couple of concussions.  Ivan Aurrecoechea got a dunk, so he seems to be well on the way to recovery.  Eli missed a jam and instead stuck the ball into the gap between rim and backboard.  Johnny McCants hit a three.  It was 41-20 Aggies at the half.

At this point, I started watching The Gifted on FOX.  I probably should have stuck with the blowout basketball.  I’ve seen less melodrama and bad acting on any given soap opera.  I checked in with the game periodically during the commercials.  The main highlight I heard was the fans getting free Chik-fil-a with a pair of free throw misses.  I missed Trevelin Queen getting a windmill dunk, though if you’re just listening over the radio, you pretty much still missed it.  80-42 Aggies was the final.  Eli Chuha and Trevelin Queen led the team with 14 points each.

2-22-19
Aggie Baseball started their series against the Yale Bulldogs on Friday.  I was actually glad I was watching this over the Internet and not there in person.  It was 42-degrees out with a 22mph wind.  Aggie starter Brock Whittlesey looked miserable out on the mound, then the rain started.  It didn’t affect his pitching though.  The Aggies scored four runs in the bottom of the first.  Two batters got hit.  Tristen Carranza actually took his base smiling.  Their coach, Brian Green, ruptured his Achilles in practice and he was still out there coaching, so no excuses for pain. 

By the second, it was raining harder, but it actually looked a bit like sleet.  Yale scored one in the inning, but Aggies came back huge.  Tristan Peterson drove in two runs, and Braden Williams doubled in two more as part of a five-run inning.  9-1 Aggies.  Whitt worked through the fifth and gave up two more runs, but the Aggies hadn’t stopped scoring, so it was 13-3 when he came out.  The wind and rain had stopped by that point, but you could see players’ breath.

I wasn’t able to watch much more, but by the sixth, the Aggies were putting in the reserves.  The final was 19-6 AggiesNick Gonzales went 4 for 5, and Braden Williams was 2 for 2 with five RBI’s.  Aggie pitching had a bunch of walks in the game, but 11 walks and five hit batters did in Yale.  Ron is a hardcore fan.  He was there.  He got there a bit late and reported that the crowd was deserting by the fourth.  He did get wet out there.

2-23-19
After my retreat from the cold wind at the baseball stadium this afternoon, I continued with listening to the double header over the radio.  But at the same time, the Aggie Men’s Basketball team was having a big game with UTRGV at the Pan-Am.  When I drove by on the way home, the parking lot was packed there.  I’d checked earlier in the week; the game was sold out. 

I ended up switching back-and-forth between games.  Of course, this meant I wasn’t really listening to either.  Also, I had a headache from catching cold at the park and couldn’t concentrate.  The Aggie Basketball team was up 45-32 at the half when I started listening.  In the second half, they added to the lead.  Ivan Aurrecoechea was playing this game with a vengeance.  The Vaqueros were the cause of his injury last month.  He took a hard foul and was nearly injured again.  It was ruled flagrant and got him hot.  It was the same type of play that he got injured on before.

The chippie play continued and the ref’s finally had to start getting involved.  The UTRGV player who fouled Ivan was later ejected for his second flagrant foul.  Even the coaches started getting into it with each other.  With the game pretty much in hand, the Aggies started playing for the crowd.  Trevelin Queen got a steal.  He then faked out Jack Nixon and crowd on jam, but went for a layup instead.  Queen later made a behind-the-back pass to Ivan, who did jam it.  Justin Hawkins let out a little cheer for the play and then apologized for the outburst.     

The Aggies had been up by at least 20, but were down to an 8-point lead with less than a minute.  Coach Jans didn’t seem bothered by it as he had the reserves in.  The Aggies won 88-79 and will have the top seed at the WAC tournamentIvan Aurrecoechea led the team with 20 points.  Hawk wasn’t surprised that the anger in the game didn’t come to blows.  Usually players say, “Hold me back!” when they’re not serious. 

Meanwhile, the Women’s Basketball team also clinched the #1 seed with a tight 70-67 win over UTRGV on the road.  Brooke Salas had 20 and Gia Pack had 17.  Aggie Softball went 2-3 at the Mary Nutter Classic tournament.  They beat North Carolina 6-2 (complete game for Analise de la Roca) and beat Cal 6-5 in ten innings with Samaria Diaz pitching most of it.  They lost a close one to nationally ranked Oregon 1-3 and dropped a blowout to Missouri, 0-15, on a run rule.  (I found out later that game started 20 minutes after that 10-inning.)  On Sunday, they lost to Ohio State 1-5.

2-26-19
In spite of confirming the start time a couple of times, the baseball game between the Aggies and Texas Tech still started an hour earlier than listed.  All right for you guys.  I missed the competitive part of the game.  Aldo Fernandez started and did well.  He only gave up one run over three innings.  In the fourth, when he was out of gas, he talked pitching Coach Anthony Clagget into letting him face one more batter with two on.  That was one batter too many.  That three-run homer broke it open.

Aggie relief pitching was reasonable.  In particular, freshman Justin Schubert went an inning with two strikeouts and no hits.  Logan Ehnes ran into the fence making a catch with the bases loaded in the sixth to keep the final score at 0-7 Texas Tech.  On the downside defensively, Eric Mingus made another error at third.

The otherwise potent Aggie offense only produced five hits for the game.  They had some hard luck DP’s, but several hard-hit balls.  Like I said elsewhere, Aggie hitting is going to mash against average pitching, but not against great pitching.  Adam Young broadcasting said that Tech may be a national championship contender.  I’m sure Coach Brian Green would love to schedule more contending teams, but probably doesn’t have the budget to.  Amazingly, this game took just under three hours.  Attendance was listed at over 3,000 for a Tuesday afternoon!

2-28-19
The Aggie Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams had both clinched the top seeds at the WAC tournament last week, but both were playing UMKC tonight to outright win the conference.  The Men played early first in Kansas City.  Owing to being busy and distracted, I wasn’t listening to the radio call, but did have the scoring up.  The guys seemed to have it in hand at the half being up 39-21. 

I started listening to the Women playing at home in Las Cruces at that point.  When they reached halftime, I switched back over to hear the end the Men’s game.  The guys cruised to a 75-55 win.  Terrell Brown and Johnny McCants led with 12 points each.  McCants got another highlight reel jam on an alley-oop.  The team had 18 turnovers, but only gave up 10 points off them.  Coach Jans delayed talking to Jack Nixon as he was talking to family and friends who came to see the game.  “I’m not telling him to hurry up,” said Jack.  Though the Women were only at halftime, Jack did predict they’d win as well.

Or alternately, he jinxed them.  Jack obviously wasn’t keeping up with the game.  The ladies started out well with a couple of early steals and firing three’s and went up by six.  However, the Roos came back and took the lead.  It was 15-26 UMKC after 10 minutes off of a 12-0 run.  Brooke Salas had zero points and had only taken one shot.  More embarrassing though, the scoreboard operator got the score wrong twice, causing delays.

Brooke did finally get a couple baskets in the second and the Aggies closed the score to 31-33 Roos.  Early in the third, the Roos increased the lead to 10.  Again, the Aggies got close.  Brooke suddenly had a double-double.  But again, UMKC pulled away with an 11-point lead.  Gia Pack, who was also scoring well but was probably trying to do too much, ended up face-down on the court after a collision on the last play of the quarter.  She was okay, but started the fourth quarter on the bench catching her breath.

I’d just about given up and thought their 20-game conference home-winning streak was over.  They were down 12 when the Aggies rallied and got within four with an eight-point run with five minutes left.  The Roos came right out of a timeout and hit a three to get it back up to seven.

From here, the Aggies completely turned up the wick.  Aaliyah Prince was a real sparkplug on offense and defense.  The Roos started coming apart and making mistakes.  With two minutes left, the Aggies were down by three and then by one.  The crowd at the Pan-Am started going wild.  The Aggies finally took the lead on a 16-3 run.  A Prince shot put the Aggies up by three with 31 seconds left.  The Roo’s started intentionally fouling, but Dominique Mills buried her foul shots to ice it.  Aggies win 68-61


That last quarter was epic, championship-level play from the Aggies.  Gia Pack led all scorers with 18 points and added 12 rebounds.  Brooke Salas had 17 points with 13 rebounds.  Ericka Mattingly and Brooke Hampel of the Roos both had 17 points.  I’m kind of hoping the Aggies don’t play UMKC in the WAC tournament.  It’s really hard to beat the same team three times in a season, especially after a pair of close games this year.  After the game, Coach Atkinson congratulated the players, her assistant coaches, and the previous staff for their recruiting and gave them all the credit for winning the WAC regular season.  That was very classy of her.

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