Late in Texas A&M basketball’s beatdown of the St. Mary’s Gaels, the Aggies had the game very well in hand, but St. Mary’s still had a little fight in them— pretty literally. After a foul, the cameras caught Rylan Griffen walking towards the Aggie huddle when a St. Mary’s player, Paulius Murauskas, collared him and attempted to start something adversarial.
Griffen, for his part, simply walked away without so much as turning around after being grabbed, but you could tell that he was feeling some of the same fire. A later replay showed that Griffen appears to say something before the altercation begins, which was probably the impetus for this whole thing— you can see the clip below.
THINGS GETS HEATED IN TEXAS A&M - ST. MARY’s
— SM Highlights (@SMHighlights1) March 20, 2026
Paulius Murauskas yanked Rylan Griffen’s jersey and things got heated.
Murauskas: “You watch your mouth!!”
Griffen left clapping the altercation. pic.twitter.com/OaF5rsJ5zN
Texas A&M’s Rylan Griffen physically confronted near the end of March Madness Round 1 matchup
It does appear as though the St. Mary’s player declares that Griffen should “watch [his] mouth” as he advances towards him, but it’s more difficult to know whether Griffen actually said something out of pocket. With Murauskas’s season coming to an end in only a few seconds, there was no doubt a heck of a lot of frustration on his part, so it’s entirely possible that Griffen made a remark that wasn’t out of place in a competition like this, and it simply caused the St. Mary’s forward to lose his patience.
The commentators mentioned that this probably would have been reviewed for a technical or flagrant foul had the game been closer, but in pursuit of moving things along, they just kept it moving, which was probably the right decision. The Gaels coaches pulled Murauskas from the game to let him cool off, which was also the right decision.
Griffen will talk a little bit of trash from time to time, but he’s not known for saying anything truly wild while out there on the floor. The severity of the beatdown that the Aggies were laying on St. Mary’s probably played in here too, but this clearly was a bit of an overreaction from Murauskas.
Hopefully, the Aggies can bring the same fire to their upcoming game against Houston. Texas A&M will be a solid underdog here, so they’ll need to play their best against the Cougars.