A primer for Saturday

IRVINE – In case you were wondering, and if you’re reading this blog you might have been, Saturday’s game against UC Riverside will be UC Davis men’s basketball’s first elimination game since March of 2000. The Aggies lost the Division II West Regional final to Seattle Pacific 68-61 in Seattle after beating BYU-Hawaii in the first round. Just about everyone that will dress for the Aggies on Saturday against the Highlands last played in an elimination game during high school with varying results. It's worth noting that UCD head coach Gary Stewart likes to recruit players from winning programs, and maybe some of that experience will come in handy.

I asked UC Irvine head coach Pat Douglass, whose team has lost to both the Aggies and Highlanders to break down the match-up. Here’s what he said:

“Except for Fullerton, Riverside’s played everyone tough at their place. It was 49-all (in the second half on Wednesday) against Pacific. They played Northridge well. They’ve played everyone really good at home. They have good overall size and they play good defense. I guess the key would be, they sometimes struggle to score if you shut down (Larry) Cunningham a little bit. He’s been one of the better players the second half of the league. The key would be shutting down Cunningham. But they do play the man sometimes, so if Davis is making their 3s that could be a big key. Davis’s guards are pretty big. We’re smaller at the guard, so it’s tough for us to match up with Riverside. I think Davis matches up pretty good at the guards.”

I watched a large portion of that UCR-Pacific game on Wednesday night and think Riverside’s defense is going to create major problems for the Aggies. It's just so active and good at forcing turnovers. The Highlanders made Pacific look tenative for large sections of the game, which is impressive. The question will be whether UCD can do enough defensively to slow the Highlanders down. They did in the first meeting by taking Larry Cunningham out of the game for long periods. My guess is that with everything on the line Saturday, he’ll force things a little bit more. The could be good or bad for the Aggies, depending on whether those shots go in. Dominic Calegari didn’t play in the first meeting and his multi-faceted game could give Riverside some trouble they didn’t encounter in the first meeting. Certainly he’s going to open up the middle for the Aggies, who need to get to the foul line and score points with the clock stopped.

Here are the updated scenarios at the bottom of the league for Saturday:
UC Davis wins, Long Beach State wins: Long Beach finishes 4-12 in the conference, a game ahead of the Aggies and Highlanders at 3-13. The Aggies advance to the tournament on the basis of a season sweep of the Riverside.
UC Davis wins, Long Beach State loses: Long Beach, UCD and UCR finish in a three-way tie for seventh at 3-13. In a three-team mini-league between those teams, the 49ers take seventh place by virtue of going 3-1 against the Aggies and Highlanders. The leaves us with the two-team tiebreaker, which UCD wins by virtue of its season sweep.
Riverside wins, LBSU wins: Riverside and LBSU finish tied for seventh at 4-12. LBSU takes seventh by virtue of its win over Santa Barbara.
Riverside wins, LBSU loses: Riverside is seventh at 4-12. Long Beach finishes a game ahead of UCD at 3-13.

We'll check in from the Inland Empire on Saturday.