Bucky McMillan and Texas A&M Basketball drop their first and only SEC Tournament game tonight as they fall to the Oklahoma Sooners, 83-63. The Aggies fall to a 21-11 overall record and will head into selection Sunday feeling pretty safe about their chances of seeing their name called during the bracket reveal. The Sooners improve to a 19-14 overall record and will now face Arkansas tomorrow night as they hope to continue to try to play their way into the NCAA tournament.
This game was over from the start. The Aggies couldn't make shots to save their lives and got down very quickly to a Sooner team that is on a win streak. The Aggies certainly improved in the second half, but when you're down 22 at half, there's not much you can do. This is not the showing that you want headed into March Madness.
Texas A&M basketball falls in first SEC Tournament game
Defense was terrible. Rebounding was atrocious. Shooting was horrible, and they even lost the turnover battle as well. The Aggies allowed four different Sooner players to score at least 14 points with Nigel Pack leading the way with a 20-point performance. The Aggies were dominated on the glass as they lose the rebounding battle by 15 and even lost the turnover battle by 3. Both teams were terrible shooting from beyond the arc tonight, but the Aggies ended up shooting a putrid 38% overall to the Sooners' 46%.
The only bright spots for the Aggies were the trio of Agee, Griffen and Isaacs. No one else could give any help. The bench only put up 12 points combined while Clemence and Hill had bad nights combining for only 13 points. Agee and Griffen led the way scoring 13 points apiece for the Aggies (Agee had yet another double-double). Pop Isaacs had 12 points himself as he continues to play well in the latter half of the season.
The team simply gave no effort tonight and they can't afford a performance like this again. The one decent thing to come out of tonight is that the loss likely firmly places the Aggies as a 10 seed, giving them a somewhat easier path to get to the second weekend. Hopefully a poor performance like this doesn't hurt them too much to put them all the way back as an 11 seed, but with how the rest of the bubble is currently playing, I think they should be ok. Check back on Sunday for our full reaction and breakdown of the Aggies' NCAA Tournament positioning.