How can the Texas A&M basketball team snap its losing streak?

The Texas A&M basketball team was on top of the world under a month ago. On January 15th, Buzz Williams’ squad won its eighth straight game, this time against Missouri. It looked like Texas A&M would be a true title contender in the SEC and as much of a sure-fire tournament team as you’ll find in January.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Just over three weeks later, the Texas A&M basketball team is looking down the barrel of an eight-game losing streak. With seven straight losses already on their resume, the Aggies will be pinned up against No. 1-ranked Auburn.

With their back against the wall, what does the Texas A&M basketball team have to do to return to winning ways?

For starters, they likely won’t get back in the win column immediately. In their next contest against the top-ranked Auburn Tigers, they’ll have to enter with a “nothing to lose” mindset. That said, if they win this one, they’ll receive an instant momentum boost.

But what needs to change statistically for the Aggies to get back into the win column?

Three-point shooting

The easier number to point to in the Aggies’ disappointing losing streak would be their three-point shooting. The team was never elite from deep but to start the season, they were shooting at a respectable clip. That respectable clip is long gone.

In a close loss against the Missouri Tigers, A&M knocked down 46.7% of its long-range shots as a team. Outside of that singular performance, Buzz Williams’ squad’s best shooting night saw them hit just 31.8% of their shots. That means that in five of the past seven games, A&M has fallen short of that mark. The shooting needs to improve.

The prime example of this came against a top-five Kentucky team. In that contest, A&M knocked down just one of its 22 attempts from long range. If just a couple more shots fell in this six-point loss, the Aggies’ season might look much different at this point in time.

Turnovers

The weird part about Texas A&M’s recent turnovers is that they haven’t had any glaringly bad games. While the Aggies have been averaging 13.7 giveaways per game, their highest total during that stretch has been 18, while they did have a strong performance with just six turnovers against Missouri.

Consistency is the issue here in the sense that the Texas A&M basketball turns the ball over too consistently. On the season, the Aggies rank 215th per game with 13.3 per game. This number should be improving as a team with a handful of new faces adjusts to one another — that has not been the case.

Free throw shooting

In college basketball, there’s really no excuse to be bad at shooting free throws. Unfortunately for Buzz Williams, his team is bad at shooting free throws. Actually, that’s an understatement — A&M is the worst free-throw-shooting high major team in the entire country.

The Aggies currently rank 327th out of 350 teams in the nation in free throw percentage, knocking down just 65.4% of its free throws. That’s really bad.

When you’re a team that has lost seven consecutive games, each by 11 points or less, you have to hit your free throws. I don’t mean this figuratively at all — if the Aggies hit a higher percentage of their free throws during that stretch, they probably win two or three of those games.