A slew of SEC honors comes in this week for Texas A&M basketball

Three Texas A&M basketball players receive distinctions

Texas A&M basketball has had an up and down season. Dominant winning streaks and pitiful losing skids; huge, top-shelf wins and bottom of the barrel losses: this season has had pretty much everything.

One thing that was almost universally agreed upon by the fanbase coming into the year—and, I’d argue, something that has been borne out over the course of the season—is the individual talent on this roster for Texas A&M basketball. Part of why there was such optimism headed into this season was that so many agreed that this was the most talented roster that Buzz has had to work with. And not only talented, but experienced as well.

Though it hasn’t always felt like it, especially judging by wins and losses, I think that has proven correct. The monumental individual efforts by different players on a given night was always one of the biggest reasons for optimism with this team—fans knew what the guys could do individually; the problem was that it looked like they had trouble coming together.

Even through those ups and downs, the individual talent shone through to such a degree that the nation took notice. Now, that is bearing fruit. Wade Taylor IV has been named to the All-SEC First Team, and Andersson Garcia has been named to the SEC All-Defensive Team. 

Though Taylor didn’t live up to his preseason SEC Player of the Year billing—likely due to shouldering so much of the scoring burden early in the year, thanks to absences and in-game necessity, that he plain wore out—it’s still a huge honor to be named to the first team. For Garcia’s part, his defense and rebounding were one of the big stories of this team over the course of the season. That’s a guy who gives it his all every night, and I’m so glad that’s being recognized.

It wasn’t just Garcia and Taylor that earned distinctions, either. One of the breakout players for Texas A&M basketball over this win streak is Manny Obaseki, and the conference has taken notice of his uptick in quality of play as well. Obaseki was named the SEC player of the week for his recent hot streak.

It’s not just Obaseki that has been more on point recently—the team has really seemed better in terms of effort, buy-in, and execution. Let’s hope that this continues into the SEC tournament, so that the Ags will have a shot at the Big Dance.