Cal Poly had a rough time getting to College Station, and once they got there, they had a pretty rough time as well, losing to Texas A&M 82-63 Tuesday night as The Aggies jumped out to a 15 point lead at halftime.

Reese Morgan led Cal Poly with 16 points on Tuesday night. By Kim Sutlive

The Mustangs played better to start the second half. With 9:40 left in the game, Cal Poly had cut the lead to nine points and had the ball. On the possession, Taylor Sutlive — arguably the team’s best three-point shooter — got a clean look at a three from the wing. He missed, but Zach Gordon grabbed the offensive rebound and kicked it to Sutlive for another try. The sophomore missed again. On the next possession, A&M made a three-pointer, increasing the lead to 12. It would never be smaller than that.

If either of Sutlive’s three-pointers would have fallen, a six-point game could have put a little pressure on the Aggies. Instead, Texas A&M cruised the rest of the way en route to a 19-point lead.

For an upset like a Cal Poly win to happen, possessions like this would have ended with the three-pointer going down. At that point in the game, I’m sure any Cal Poly fan who pays attention would have taken two wide open three-point attempts from Sutlive to try to close the gap.

For Sutlive and the Mustangs, the shots didn’t fall and now Cal Poly has Big West Conference play to look forward to. They’ll have a lot of time to hone their game too. The Texas A&M game and their conference opener –at Hawai’i — are the only two games for Cal Poly in a span of over three weeks.

Awich goes down

Joel Awich went down with what looked like an ankle injury and was seen in a boot on the end of the bench as the game wound-down. Awich was Cal Poly’s best player early in the season and, though the Mustangs front line is deep enough to withstand a short-term injury, losing him would be a blow to the Mustangs long-term. I’ll try to update about his injury in the next week or so.

Photos by Kim Sutlive

[See image gallery at www.fansmanship.com]

A three game road trip to Texas was never so complicated.

After playing the first two games of a three-game Texas road trip to end their pre-conference schedule, the Cal Poly men’s basketball team took a five-day break around the Christmas holiday. Players, coaches, and team personnel left from San Antonio last week and disbursed to Seattle, Minnesota, other parts of Texas, and all over California, among other places.

Their return became a nightmare of delays and cancellations caused by a strong storm in Texas that brought tornadoes to the northern part of the state. According to this article, about half of Sunday’s flights were delayed, averaging an hour or two. Many Cal Poly folks wished their flights were delayed by only a few hours.

Josh Martin (front right) and Trevor John (front left), along with coaches and teammates were on this plane for the better part of five hours without leaving San Antonio. Gross. Photo courtesy of Josh Martin

After being delayed on a flight from San Luis Obispo to Phoenix, only about half of a group of coaches and staff were able to sprint to the connecting flight on Sunday morning. Others, including play-by-play broadcaster Tom Barket and some coaches who gate-checked bags, were not that lucky and were delayed in Phoenix for most of the day after missing the connection.

“Mitch Reaves made it and they closed the door behind him,” said Associate Head Coach Paul Fortier. “We were 30 seconds behind him, but they had closed the door.”

Some who made the connection probably wished they hadn’t. A group of players and coaches on the flight from Phoenix to Houston circled Houston for some time before diverting to San Antonio. After sitting on the tarmac for three hours there, they were allowed off the plane for 20 minutes before boarding again, only to wait for a few more hours. That group arrived at Houston around 8:30 or 9:00 on Sunday night and was able to check into their hotel. Josh Martin, who spent the holiday in Phoenix, was one player who made the San Antonio stop.

“I feel weird I feel like I’m rested but as soon as I step on the court, my body’s going to be deflated and not ready to go,” the 6′ 8″ Martin said before Monday’s practice. “I tried to do some stretching last night, but I was definitely sore.”

The three who didn’t make the flight out of Phoenix — Joe Callero, Paul Fortier, and Barket — tried in vain to get on at least two flights before they finally caught one late in the evening and arrived at about 12:30, some six hours after the scheduled Sunday evening practice at Rice. Only seven players made it to the session.

“Being 6’9″, it wasn’t as bad as having to sit on an airplane for that long,” said Fortier, who caught some NFL action on the televisions in the airport with Callero and Barket throughout the day.

Joel Awich, a 6’7″ senior from Minnesota, had a two-hour delay, but his direct flight from Minneapolis was able to land safely and he made it to the scheduled practice along with seniors David Nwaba and Reese Morgan, among others. For his part, Awich seemed pretty focused on the job ahead.

“We just watched film on them,” said Awich on Monday afternoon before practice. “They looked really good. Like every other game, a team we can beat, but we just have to be serious, get our heads in the game early, shake off all this flight stuff, get back to where we are as a team, and handle our business tomorrow.”

All three Texas-based players ended up sleeping in their own beds on Sunday night. After Taylor Sutlive’s flight from San Antonio to Houston was canceled Sunday night, he hitched a ride with his family, picking up Hank Hollingsworth in Austin on the way to Houston, where he arrived around the middle of the day on Monday.

Sutlive, who mostly followed the Texas Longhorns growing up just north of San Antonio, also talked about shaking off the rust.

“It could affect the team mentally,” said Sutlive of the delays. “But A&M’s a good team regardless. We missed a practice yesterday. A lot of it’s concentration and focus. We have practice tonight and we’ll be ready to go. The atmosphere in [Reed Arena] is great and obviously we’ve got to come ready to play.”

The two players who got the worst of the travel issues were Seattle-based Luke Meikle and Zach Gordon. On the same flight, the two had a similar diversion as the group that went to San Antonio, only ZG and Luke (6’8″ and 6’9″ tall respectively) were diverted to Lake Charles, Louisiana and  sat on the Tarmac for up to 7 hours without getting off the plane and without food. By the time they let them deplane in Lake Charles, the only place they could get food was McDonalds. After finding a hotel in Louisiana late on Sunday night, Meikle and Gordon finally made it to Houston on Monday morning and joined the team in College Station around the middle of the day.

Fortier said that the Mustangs had a lot to do on Monday in preparation for Tuesday’s game.

“It was the first time the guys were able to present our scouting report to them,” said Fortier. “We did that this afternoon once ZG and Luke got in, so were were able to go over some things from our last game as well. We still want to learn from things we can learn from. Then we got to really get a good sweat. Our guys’ intensity level was good. I think from the few days off, guys came back with their batteries charged.”

MT @TomBarket: Full practice, Reed Arena in College Station. CP plays 2nd game ever vs SEC. Tomorrow 5PT v Texas A&M pic.twitter.com/szT7x0mvJw

— Big West MBB (@BigWestMBB) December 29, 2015

Fortier sees a big test ahead of the Mustangs on Tuesday night in College Station.

“They’re a big, talented team, and they have a number of seniors,” said Fortier of the Aggies. “When you see top-25 teams [in today’s college basketball], you see younger players, but they have a number of seniors in their starting five. They are an older experienced team that play well together and a couple of freshmen who play together as well.”

Finally reunited, Cal Poly will tip-off against #19/20 Texas A&M at 5:00pm. You can find the game on the SEC Network or listen to Tom Barket here.

Thankfully a full practice in College Station tonight w/ the entire team. Game Tue. vs. #14 Texas A&M will require our best effort in years!

— Joe Callero (@CoachCallero) December 29, 2015

Johnny Manziel. Johnny Football. Heisman Winner.

Whatever you want to call him, he is still the reigning freshman Heisman trophy winner and nothing that people say about him is going to ever change that. Recently Manziel has been accused of receiving a large sum of money for his various autographs, which is a direct violation of the NCAA. If found guilty of this, Manziel would have lost his eligibility to play in the 2013-2014 season. But no evidence was found and all Manziel was given was a half game suspension against Rice in Texas A&M’s season opener.

With all the offseason distractions, can Johnny Football lead Texas A&M to a National Title? By Shutterbug459, via Wikimedia Commons

I am totally fine with the rule that the athletes can’t be paid to play like in the professional league but at least let the kids make some money.

College athletes risk injury every time they step onto a field, court, etc… . They, in turn, should be allowed to go out and get some income for themselves. Manziel isn’t the first and sure as hell won’t be the last college athlete to have to deal with the NCCA’s ridiculous rules. Unlike others, though, he escaped them with just a slap on the wrist.

Many people will question how this happened because it seemed almost certain that Manziel was guilty. He doesn’t portray himself as a good standing college athlete unlike most of his other competition. He has been ridiculed for “partying” or just being a college student but that is exactly what he is — a college student.

We tend to forget that these kids that play the college sports we love oh so much are just 18-22 years old. Yes, they are representatives of huge institutions of higher learning and as such are under pressure to portray mature and respectful attitudes. But they are still in college, and we shouldn’t forget that. I doubt the people who are writing about him acted professional while they were in college and while most of those writers were not a “star athlete,” I don’t think it should make a difference.

Manziel is going to make mistakes. He is going to rant about things that don’t make sense on social networking sites, and he is going to be late for things sometimes. It will either affect his draft stock and ability to play in the NFL or not, but either way, people need to get over this overblown “story.” Give the kid a break. He won the Heisman as a freshman and I believe could win it again this season.

Just because he doesn’t fit into society’s expectation of an all-American quarterback from Texas doesn’t mean you have to ridicule him for every little thing he does. And to me, since Manziel has come to college, especially after winning the Heisman, he has basically been flipping the bird to the NCAA.