These are must-win games for Texas A&M basketball to make March Madness

Texas A&M basketball hanging on by a thread to tournament hopes; which games are must-win?

With only four games left on the schedule for this up-and-down Texas A&M basketball team, most fans really don’t want there to be any “must-wins” in order to make the tourney. You would hope that the team had done enough so as to be a sure thing by now, but this year’s version of Texas A&M basketball is determined to make nothing easy.

The Ags will host two more home games down the stretch of this season: South Carolina and Mississippi State. Tomorrow, they visit Athens, Georgia to take on the Bulldogs for the first time in 2024, and they close the season in Oxford, Mississippi.

Georgia and South Carolina are both Q2 games. You need to win both of those if you want to have any shot at making the tourney. Though the Aggies are currently 2-2 in such games, they really can’t afford any more non-Q1 losses at this juncture, given their horrifically high number of 4 Q3 losses.

Both Mississippi State and Ole Miss are Q1, but each just barely. The game against the Bulldogs, being at home, qualifies as such since they are in the top 30 of the NET; they are currently 28th. The game against the Rebels, being at home, qualifies as such since they are in the top 75 of the NET; they are currently 74th.

Since some time and games separate the current moment from the Aggies taking each of these teams on, one or both of them could have fallen out of their current designation when the game comes around. Even if not, the way the game against the Aggies goes could cause them to fall out.

Texas A&M basketball is currently 58th in the NET. When they were left out of the field two years ago, they ranked 43rd. Now, they had much less of an argument with their strength of schedule back then, but that’s not a favorable ranking by any means.

I’ll say that, at the current moment, the Ole Miss game would be a more forgivable loss. You need to close out the home slate with a bang, which a win over a highly-rated Mississippi State team would accomplish well.

It all starts tomorrow with Georgia. If you lose that one, that could be the death knell. String together some games here at the end of the season, though, and you never know what might happen.