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 Devils. Jack 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 Aggies. Nick 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 tournament. Ivan
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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