Santa Barbara first.

AJ Mitchell is the real deal. great having Jones look 100% as one of the guys we'll thrown on him. Santa Barbara's bigs along with Hawaii's are the ones that provide the physical test for our bigs.
Add in Pasterdick so hopefully the fans give him a ton of smack.
If I'm an opposing coach I'm gonna try to test/pressure out ball-handling w/o Murray, maybe even press a bit.

Irvine:

against Full, it was the FTs that were the bugaboo causing us to not win by more. vs. Irvine, it was part Turnovers, and part inability to control Baker (1st team Big West material) and DJ.

3 pt shooting. while not spectactular, two straight games of solid (about 0.350) 3 pt shooting including Rootegaard's clutch and Jones hitting again. getting a lot more confident to score outside, so long as Tsahonis, Rootegaard, Hunter don't jack up bad ones and shoot it when square.

good and bad. outboarding teams by 20 and only squeaking out wins. with that dominance the team could be blowing out even upper tier Big West teams. it's becoming the fundamental equivalent with Tone pausing on some drives when there's a wall, and aforementioned Tsahonis giving up the ball to get it back on movement.

you get teh sense with Jones back and fundamental strong ball-handling, this team could put a beatdown on some unfortunate Big West team.

We're still the 160th best team in teh country, per metrics, and the expectation was to be a a top 100 team, so now can they meet that expectation? That was predicated on Murray being 100%, but also we've seen Stroud & LT and AJ being players beyond even some good expectations.

common denominator to last year's run? injuries happen and AT just takes on any and every role asked of him, and is a wrecking ball who like Rodman, can't be blocked out. watch AT, he doesn't push, he positions and almost unguardable....now if ONLY we'll let hime take a few outside shots!! cmon man!! I guarantee he'll hit a couple and then things will open up even more. As it is, he creates so much havoc on teh boards and then LT's strength and improved position makes LT a rebounding machine. Santa Barbara is gonna think they are seeing flashbacks to Big Al next week - relentless.