Why the Texas A&M basketball team should be ranked in the next AP Poll

The Texas A&M basketball team isn’t a blue blood basketball program. In fact, the Aggies have been, at least historically speaking, one of the worst high major basketball teams in the country. Buzz Williams plans to change that.

In the eyes of the media, however, the Aggies still have a long way to go.

In the latest AP Poll, the Texas A&M basketball team received a whopping… *checks notes*… zero votes. Despite being 12-2, there is virtually no respect, no media attention, and no notice of this Aggie basketball squad. Here’s why that needs to come to an end.

The Texas A&M basketball team may not be a title contender, but they’ve done as much as any other top-25 team

While you may not be able to form the deepest argument in favor of the Aggies being in the top-25, there is no argument to be made for them to be kept out of the top-25. Allow me to explain.

Texas A&M sits at 12-2. The list of teams — perhaps even more specifically, high major teams — that have reached 12 wins on the year is not long. To be specific, that list only has seven teams on it, five of whom are currently ranked in the AP top-25.

The caveat here is that those teams all have proven talent to some degree. While the Aggies are playing undeniably great basketball and likely should be in the AP top-25, it’s not a surprise to see that they’re not. Before this season, most basketball fans didn’t know names like Henry Coleman, Quenton Jackson, and Marcus Williams.

Heck, most of them still don’t.

Perhaps this is a result of the fact that Texas A&M isn’t necessarily overly explosive in any way. Their offense is relatively pedestrian at 91st in the nation, while the defense doesn’t stick out in a crowd at 41st while allowing just 61.1 points per game.

And this doesn’t translate well to rankings like KenPom which, in my opinion, are a waste of breath in any situation. The issue here, and the issue that will persist for the entire season, is that basketball team ratings are almost entirely based on previous seasons. If you’ve been living under a rock, Texas A&M has been terrible in recent seasons.

And to an extent, that should matter. Unfortunately, the Aggies will likely be underrated for the entirety of the season because of this.

That said, A&M has played as well as anybody in college basketball not named Baylor or Duke. They deserve a top-25 ranking.