THIS WEEK…
EXHIBITION: Stanislaus State at UC Davis
Friday, Nov. 4, 2016
7:00 p.m.
The Pavilion (5,931)
Davis, Calif.
TV: None
RADIO: KDVS 90.3 FM
Game Coverage: Live Stats | Audio

TIP-OFF: Fresh off a 55-point win in its exhibition opener, the UC Davis women's basketball team returns to Bob Hamilton Court at The Pavilion on Friday night for its final tune-up before the start of the 2016-17 season, hosting former conference rival Stanislaus State at 7 p.m. The Aggies officially open the campaign at home on Nov. 11 against Portland at 7:00 p.m.

IN THE POLLS: UC Davis is unranked to begin the season; However, the Aggies are scheduled to meet a pair of schools that are ranked in the preseason top 25: Stanford opens the season at No. 10 and Oregon State is ranked No. 17 in the USA Today Coaches Poll.

BE A FOLLOWER: Fans can keep up with the latest in UC Davis athletics by "liking" us on Facebook (facebook.com/UCDavisAggies) and following us on Twitter (@UCDavisAggies). You can also "like" the women's basketball program (facebook.com/UCDavisWomensBasketball) as well as follow them on Twitter and Instagram (@UCDavisWBB). In-game updates on game day are also available on Twitter by following @UCDavisInGame.

SO... HOW 'BOUT THEM AGGIES?: UC Davis returns seven letter winners overall and three starters off of last season's squad that finished 19-13 overall and advanced all the way to the Big West Conference Tournament championship game as the No. 4 seed, including upsetting top-seeded UC Riverside in the semifinals -- a team that finished the regular season a perfect 16-0 in conference play. Gone are all-conference selections Alyson Doherty (first team) and Celia Marfone (honorable mention), but the Aggies return leading scorer Morgan Bertsch, who averaged 13.9 ppg en route to second-team honors as well as a spot on the all-freshman squad, and honorable mention selection Pele Gianotti, who averaged 11.5 points and 5.2 rebounds per game and ranked among the top 15 in the Big West in six different categories.

ABOUT THE WARRIORS: Stanislaus State is coming off a 2015-16 season that saw the Warriors finish 16-11 overall and 12-8 in the California Collegiate Athletic Association... Friday night's game against UC Davis is the first of two exhibitions against Division I opponents as Stanislaus will take on Nevada on Saturday (Nov. 5) before opening their regular season in Oregon... Senior forward Cassidy Sanders-Curry leads all returning scorers after pacing the team with 9.9 points per game and shooting just under 40 percent from the field in 27 games... Head Coach Wayman Strickland is in his fifth season, improving a Warrior program that won just two games in his first season to 16 wins in 2015-16 -- the highest number of wins since Stanislaus State finished 18-10 in 2002-03.

SERIES NOTES: Although Friday night's game won't officially count toward the all-time records, UC Davis leads the all-time series with Stanislaus State, 43-20, but the two programs haven't met in a game that counted since March 6, 2004 -- a 91-76 Aggie victory on the road... Overall in the series, UC Davis has won five of the last six, and 15 of the last 17 meetings at home.

SUCH AN EXHIBITIONIST: UC Davis enters Friday's contest against Stanislaus State having won its last 13 exhibition games dating back to a 43-41 loss to Sonoma State on Nov. 6, 2006. Following last Saturday's win over Oregon Tech, the Aggies have also posted exhibition wins over the Melbourne Roos, Concordia (Ore.), Humboldt State (five times), Sonoma State (twice), Australian Showcase, San Francisco State, and Redlands, during their winning streak.

LAST TIME OUT: In the earliest exhibition opener in the program's Division I history, UC Davis got a game-high 21 points from junior guard Dani Nafekh, and finished with four players in double figures overall en route to a 97-42 win over visiting Oregon Tech. Nafekh was joined in double figures by classmates Rachel Nagel (19) and Pele Gianotti (11), while freshman Nina Bessolo chipped in 18 points off the bench in her Aggies debut. Every UC Davis player recorded at least one point in the scoring column as the defense held the Owls to just 28 percent from the floor for the game and the home team broke a 2-2 tie with a 12-0 run that gave the Aggies, who shot 50 percent from the field overall, a lead they would never relinquish.

HSU JOINS THE ROSTER: UC Davis picked up another newcomer for its 2016-17 roster prior to the start of the season, welcoming walk-on Kaitlyn Hsu to the Aggie family. Hsu, a four-year letter winner at Northwood HS in Irvine, Calif., is a neurobiology, physiology, and behavior major who averaged better than 14 points per game during her senior season, while earning All-CIF and All-Pacific Coast League honors as a junior, setting school records in scoring (20.5 ppg) and three-pointers made (70).

NO MORE JITTERS: Last weekend's contest against Oregon Tech gave the Aggie newcomers a chance to play in front of the hometown crowd for the first time and shake off any jitters in their first game at the Division I level. Aside from Bessolo's performance that saw the Hayward, Calif., native add four rebounds and three blocks in 15 minutes of work, freshman Sophia Song came off the bench to score seven points and grab eight rebounds in 15 minutes, while junior Marly Anderson scored six points and blocked three shots in 19 minutes in her UC Davis debut after spending two years at Eastern Washington and sitting out all of last season due to NCAA transfer rules.

THEY'RE JUST AGGIES FROM THE BLOCK: In a trend that we're sure the coaching staff would like to continue throughout the season, the Aggies would have tied the school record with their 10 blocks against Oregon Tech last weekend... had the stats counted toward the regular season. UC Davis, which set a school single-season record with 125 blocks overall as a team in 2015-16, established the single-game standard against Humboldt State more than two decades ago on Feb. 18, 1995.

LET'S GET OFFENSIVE: The 97 points scored against Oregon tech marked the second-highest point total in an exhibition in the program's Division I history, trailing only the 118 points scored against the Australian Showtime traveling team on Nov. 6, 2008.

TAKE TWO: The 2016-17 season marks the first time since the Aggies' first two offical seasons at the Division I level that they will play a pair of exhibitions before opening the regular season. In its Division I debut, UC Davis opened with wins over Humboldt State (79-61) and Concordia (83-33) in 2007, while posting victories over Australian Showtime (118-44) and Sonoma State (87-53) a year later.

AGGIES RECEIVE HIGH PRAISE IN PRESEASON POLLS: The UC Davis women's basketball team received high praise from the coaches and media, picked to finish second by the Big West Conference head coaches and fourth by the media during the 2016-17 according to the league's preseason polls released on Oct. 25. The runner-up in last year's Big West Tournament, the Aggies received 61 points from the coaches to finish behind only Long Beach State, which received five of the nine first-place votes and 73 points overall. In the media poll, UC Davis received one first-place vote and garnered 113 points overall to place behind the 49ers (nine first-place nods, 157 points), UC Riverside, and Hawai'i -- all of which reached the semifinals of last year's conference tournament.

BERTSCH EARNS PRESEASON HONORS: UC Davis sophomore Morgan Bertsch was one of six student-athletes named to the league's preseason all-conference team -- the fourth consecutive season that the Aggies have had a player so honored. Bertsch becomes the fifth UC Davis player to earn a spot on the preseason all-conference squad, joining two-time preseason honorees Haylee Donaghe, Paige Mintun, and Sydnee Fipps, as well as 2015 selection, Alyson Doherty.

TOURNEY-TESTED SCHEDULE: UC Davis is scheduled to play a total of 12 contests against teams that reached the postseason a year ago, including road contests at "Final Four" participant Oregon State (Dec. 14) and NCAA regional finalist Stanford (Dec. 4). Aside from the Beavers and Cardinal, the Aggies will also take on NCAA Tournament participants San Francisco, Jacksonville, and Big West Tournament champion Hawai'i, and face-off against WNIT qualifiers UC Riverside, Long Beach State, Montana State, Saint Mary's, and Hofstra. The Pride advanced the furthest of any of the WNIT qualifiers on UC Davis' schedule, reaching the quarterfinals before falling to eventual tournament runner-up, and Atlantic Sun Conference rival, Florida Gulf Coast.

LET'S PLAY TWO: Harkening back to their old Division II days, the Aggies will join the men's team on the floor at the Pavilion for a quartet of home doubleheaders this season -- all during Big West play -- while preceeding the UC Davis men for a pair on the road at Cal Poly and UC Santa Barbara on Feb. 2 and 4, respectively. In a rematch of last year's Big West Tournament championship game, the Aggies host Hawai'i on Jan. 7 (men vs. Cal Poly), UC Davis welcomes Cal State Fullerton on Jan. 28 (men vs. UC Irvine), face-off against UC Irvine on Feb. 11 (men vs. UC Riverside), and close out the home schedule with a "Senior Day" battle against UC Santa Barbara on Feb. 25 (men vs. Long Beach State).

HOME, SWEET HOME: UC Davis women's basketball fans will be able to get their fill of the Aggies to start the 2016-17 season, as they will play eight of their first 10 games on Bob Hamilton Court in The Pavilion before embarking on a six-game road-trip to close out the calendar year. It's an almost unheard-of stretch to start the season for UC Davis, which hasn't opened with this many games at home to open a campaign since the 1990-91 season when the Aggies also opened with eight of their first 10 at home, finishing 8-2 in those games.

STATE OF THE AGGIES: Nearly half of the 2016-17 UC Davis women's basketball roster is made up of players from outside the state of California -- the highest number of out-of-state student-athletes in the program's Division I history. The six out-of-staters have a decided Pacific Northwest tilt as the Aggie coaching staff has successfully mined the state of Oregon for three players (Pele Gianotti, Marly Anderson, and Emma Gibb), while two (Kourtney and Karley Eaton) hail from the state of Washington.

SEEING DOUBLE: Karley (older by one minute) and Kourtney Eaton are believed to be only the second set of sisters to take the floor together in the history of the women's basketball program, joining Dru and Rachelle Hanft during the 1999 campaign. Taking it one step further, both the Eaton's and Hanft's are identical twins.

BY THE NUMBERS: Despite the loss of two of its top four scorers from a season ago, UC Davis returns nearly two-thirds of its offense statistically for the 2016-17 season, bringing back 65% (1,416 of 2,191) of its total points, 60 percent (720 of 1,198) of its rebounds, 73 percent (382 of 526) of its assists, 66 percent (520 of 788) of its field goals, 76 percent (153 of 201) of its three-pointers, and 54 percent (223 of 414) of its made free throws. What does it all mean? We don't know, but numbers are fun.

SHE CAN DISH IT OUT: Junior guard Dani Nafekh set a school single-season Division I Era record with her 130 assists as a sophomore, helping her move up the career chart and stand fifth with 196 in her two seasons as an Aggie. Four more assists would give the Canadian 200 for her career, making her only the fifth UC Davis player to reach that plateau in the program's Division I history: Hana Asano (278), Blair Shinoda (223), Alyson Doherty (214), and Celia Marfone (206).