Back home with the Aggies

The Cardinal have returned from two tough games on the road to play at home against the UC Davis Aggies on Wednesday at 7:00 pm.

If you can't be there to see them, you can watch the game on Stanford All-Access, listen to it on KZSU, or follow the action on GameTracker.

The Aggies are coming off their best season ever — they were the Big West champion last season and advanced to the NCAA for the first time (where they lost to Stanford in the first round).

Jos on defense at 2010-11 NCAA round 1

They began this season with a 5-0 run, then lost to Santa Clara 78-81 in their sixth game. However, they've had a fairly weak schedule so far. Their schedule strength is ranked 256 by Sagarin/CBS (incidentally, that's 3 points better than UConn's schedule strength at this time). They've been picked to finish third in the Big West, behind Cal Poly and UC Santa Barbara.

The Aggies have lost their three leading scorers and rebounders (Paige Mintun, Vicky Deely and Heidi Heintz), and they have a new coach — sort of. Sandy Simpson retired after 14 seasons as head coach. Taking over is Jennifer Gross, who was an assistant coach at UC Davis for four years and then associate head coach for the past three.

However, ten players returned from last season, including three senior starters — Samantha Meggison , Hana Asano and Kasey Reicks

UC Davis is a small team. All their starters are less than six feet tall. They do have a couple of taller players (6'2" senior post Lauren Juric and 6'3" sophomore post Kelsey Beard), but neither has played yet this season. I don't know why — there's no injury report on them.

The Aggies have made up for their lack of size with their defensive efforts. They've averaged 12.8 steals per game, nearly twice that of their opponents, and forced their opponents to an average of 21.2 turnovers a game,

The UC Davis starters are:

• #32, 5'11" senior guard Samantha Meggison leads the Aggies in scoring (13.5), rebounding (4.7) and steals (3.0). She has scored in double digits in all six games this season.


• #2, 5'6" seniot guatd Hana Asano is second to Meggison in points (10.0) and steals ( 2.8). She has the most assists (3.5) with a good assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.5


• #5, 5'7" junior guard Hannah Stephens averages 8.7 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 2.0 steals per game.


• #10, 5'10" junior guard Blair Shinoda is the second-best rebounder (4.3) and averages 7.2 points per game.


• #25, 5'11" senior forward Kasey Reicks averages 8.2 points and 2.0 rebounds per game.

The Aggies' best 3-point specialist is 5'11" junior guard Cortney French, who comes off the bench. She has averaged just under three per game at a rate of 42.5%.

Here are the Aggies' 2011-12 statistics and roster.