UCLA wrap

LOS ANGELES -- UC Davis head coach Gary Stewart spent much of his Christmas week fighting a fairly nasty bout of flu. The good news, he said beneath the stands at Pauley Pavilion, was that nothing he saw on the floor Saturday at No. 5 UCLA made him any sicker. The Bruins are a better team than the Aggies and that really showed. Kevin Love is as impressive as advertised. And, if that was Darren Collison at less-than-full speed (because of a knee brace he will shed Monday), than the Pac-10 will really have its work cut out for it.

I missed Ben Howland's postgame comments -- he was done before I finished my conversations outside the Aggie locker room, and the quote in today's paper included the "told reporters" tag indicate that other people gathered it -- but in the L.A. Times he said he wanted to play UCD because he wanted practice defending an offense like Princeton. They'll see a similar look from No. 4 Washington State, among others. If Stewart wants to add Pac-10 games to the non-conference schedule, it seems as though Howland has made his sales pitch for him. I also opened Page D5 of my Times this morning to see a large picture of Kyle Brucculeri battling Alfred Aboya for a rebound.

I am going to refrain from any real judgements based on this game. Rebounding and offensive execution remain problematic, but I actually thought the Aggies played well defensively until the final five minutes. But we'll see where this is all headed. What isn't good news for UCD is that across town, UC Riverside outrebounded USC and led by 14 at one point before falling 70-57 at the Galen Center. Riverside was the odds-on choice to finish last, but anything that makes the Highlanders a tough match-up isn't good news for the Aggies.

Here at Pauley

LOS ANGELES – Greetings from football central, otherwise known today as Pauley Pavilion. UCLA hired Rick Neuheisel today to coach its football program, and that seems to have eclipsed some of the energy around this game in Los Angeles. UC Davis is getting 35 points on the big board in Vegas.

UCD has no new injury updates, with Dominic Calegari (knee) the only player missing the trip. Jesse Lopez Low (chronic fatigue syndrome) is here and is expected to play in his first road game of the season. He’s testing himself this trip, trying to see what he’ll be able to provide the Aggies on the road in the Big West. He’s probably UCD’s best answer to Kevin Love, although that’s a relative designation. The combination of Love and Darren Collison might be the best the Aggies see all year.

UCLA center Lorenzo Mata-Real is listed as doubtful for today’s game, which will give the Aggies one few big body to contend with.

End of the year

In the past few weeks, The Enterprise sports staff debated on the top 10 Davis sports stories of the year. We didn't always agree (no punches were thrown) but think we came up with an interesting list. The story will run in Sunday's edition. Honestly, the top five are all pretty strong but there's always some room for debate.

If anyone has any feedback on the top five, let us know what you think. We're extremely hard-headed this time of the year, so good luck!

Laying the Wood

The Davis High girls basketball team couldn’t recover from a 14-point deficit after the first quarter on Friday and fell to Will C. Wood of Vacaville 70-50. Jamie Capoot had a game-high 24 points for Wood.

The Wildcats pushed the ball up the court and shot 10-for-18 from the field in the first quarter as the Blue Devils had no answer defensively.

DHS (4-6) employed an effective full-court press in the fourth quarter and went on an 8-0 run to cut the Wood lead to 13, but that was as close as it would get. The Wildcats made their free throws to pull away.

Shelby Ferguson and Nikol Allison each had 13 points to lead the Blue Devils.

The Wildcats swept the three games as they won the JV game 42-20 and the freshman game 52-31.

For more on the game, check out Sunday's Enterprise.

- Conor Tekautz

In case you were curious

We talked a little bit about Presbyterian's road to Division I in the paper on Monday. ESPN has picked up on the Blue Hose's (I think that's right) fantastic voyage. It's not a bad read.

Blogging about blogging

So the NCAA's new blogging regulations have been making the rounds, much to my amusement. Perhaps you'll remember last June, when a reporter from the newspaper in Louisville was thrown out of the press box during an NCAA baseball playoff game for liveblogging. The reasoning the NCAA gave was that a live account of the game would erode the position of its TV rightsholders. It's an idea that makes sense for about two seconds until you realize, no sane person would rather read a live blog than watch the game, if it were possible to do so. But some of us work for a living. And sometimes games are played at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Friday. So this is clearly foolish.

Frankly this surprises me. I dealt with the NCAA when planning to do our soccer live blog from UCD's playoff match against Cal and the people couldn't have been nicer. They even linked to our site and gave us a nice little traffic bump. Now, maybe they didn't expect anyone to come up with so much to say about a soccer match (ahem, ahem). Or maybe, I was up at the top of the stadium and most of the sports info people were on the field and it was just a long way to walk. Ultimately, this smacks of an organization carving out a silly position, reconsidering but trying to save face by coming up rules that seem momentarily reasonable but don't pass the laugh test. I also wonder, if I had done the exact same format and just posted the updates every nine minutes of game time whether I would have been "in compliance." See, silly rule.

Take that, Craigslist

Tipster Wayne tells us that UC Davis is, apparently, looking for a defensive assistant coach.

I thought the job ad might be interesting to see.