49.6 F
Davis

Davis, California

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Men’s Basketball Preview

Teams: UC Davis at Long Beach State

Records: Aggies 6-10, (1-3); 49ers 9-8, (4-0)

Where: Walter Pyramid – Long Beach, Calif.

When: Tonight at 8 p.m.

Who to watch: To his teammates, Eddie Miller is a fighter.

“Miller does the same thing every game,” said senior teammate Joe Harden. “He plays as hard as he can and he leaves it all out on the floor.”

To the team as a whole, the 6-foot-5 guard out of Antioch, Calif. is a leader.

In the last two games, the junior transfer from California has led the team in scoring, with 18 points against UC Santa Barbara and 15 against Cal Poly.

Additionally, Miller is ranked sixth in overall field goal percentage in the Big West Conference, shooting over 48 percent on the season.

Did you know? UC Davis leads the Big West in three-point field goals made per game with 7.6 per contest.

Preview: Forget the fact that last place UC Davis is playing top-ranked Long Beach State on the road.

The Aggies have faith in their potential so long as they continue doing what they’ve been trying to do all season.

“We’re close to being good,” Harden said. “We just need to take care of the ball and rebound. When we start limiting teams to one shot, we’re going to be a pretty tough team to beat. We just have to stick with what we’re doing.”

The young Aggies have gotten off to a sluggish start to league play, dropping three straight games.

In Saturday’s 48-43 loss to Cal Poly, UC Davis shot 31 percent from the field, including 16 percent from three-point range. The Aggies went 0-for-8 from behind the arc in the second half.

But the Aggies have already put that game behind them.

“There’s a lot of basketball left to play – we haven’t gotten through the first half of conference yet,” said coach Gary Stewart. “It’s incumbent upon us to get after it [this] week as we have a tough assignment against Long Beach State.”

The 49ers will enter tonight’s contest with a perfect 4-0 record in conference play. The 49ers have beaten their conference opponents by a combined 54 points.

Additionally, all five of Long Beach State’s starters are averaging double figures in points per game with Casper Ware, T.J. Robinson and Larry Anderson all averaging over 14.

The Aggies will need to out-rebound players like Robinson, who is one of two in the Big West averaging a double double, with 10.2 boards per contest.

Tonight’s game will be nationally televised on ESPNU as one of the Aggies’ four televised games this season. Additionally, it will air on KFSG 1690 AM with Scott Marsh on play-by-play.

– Grace Sprague

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