Could the Texas A&M basketball team be. . . good?

Texas A&M basketball fans have not had a fun year. While Buzz Williams did begin to recruit at an elite level, the 2021 season looked extremely bleak for the Aggies. In an odd turn of events, however, the Texas A&M basketball team might actually be good.

In hindsight, this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. There isn’t a coach in college basketball who made better use of the transfer portal, which only added to Buzz Williams’ strong existing recruiting class.

But one of the biggest issues in Williams’s philosophy was that the team didn’t have a single distinctive star player on the roster. The argument could be made that Henry Coleman, a Duke transfer, was set to become that guy. The reality, however, is that this team seemingly doesn’t need a single star player, even six games into the year.

The Texas A&M basketball team might be good without a true star leader

Something that many fans and analysts failed to consider is simple — the Texas A&M basketball team might not need a single star player to find success.

As things stand, this Aggie basketball team is coming off of its fifth win in its first six games of the year. The only loss was a competitive contest against Wisconsin, a really good basketball team. None of their wins have been overly impressive until Tuesday when they knocked off the Butler Bulldogs.

And they’re doing it as a gritty basketball team.

Even with subpar shooting numbers, the Aggies managed to play extremely disruptive defense against Butler, creating 19 turnovers and blocking two shots. And those two blocks were extremely timely, keeping the Bulldogs out of this game.

This team was also elite on the offensive glass, pulling in 12 offensive rebounds on the night. Henry Coleman III, Duke transfer, pulled in four of these on his own. If there’s a star player on this team — it’s him.

This win against Butler gave the Aggies a win that essentially summed up how their entire season had gone to this point. Winning basketball — even if it’s not pretty. The team-high scorer had 15 points in Quenton Jackson, while no other player scored more than eight points.

On the season, A&M does not have a single particularly high scorer. In fact, the team has four scorers who are averaging between 10.2 and 11.6 points per game. If it wasn’t already clear, this game wasn’t a bad offensive performance and lucky defensive performance — it was the type of hard-nosed, defensive basketball that Buzz Williams will be saving his job with.

If you’re like me, you hadn’t even considered this until just now — the Texas A&M basketball team might actually be good.