WATCH: Elation, tears as Texas A&M basketball team finds out they are in the tourney

See the moment that Texas A&M basketball found out they were in the Big Dance

It's no secret that I've at times been critical of the up and down performance of Texas A&M basketball this year. I've done my best to be fair, but the plain fact of the matter is that this is a squad that has failed to live up to the expectations they had coming into the year—expectations that I think, both then and now, were fair—and so I felt it was fair to evaluate them against those expectations.

That doesn't mean, though, that I didn't think this was a team that cared or worked hard. They put up lackluster performances from time to time, seemingly almost randomly, it's true. But I never doubted that the players or the coach (especially the coach, sometimes) were taking these losses harder than any of us.

This is part of the program that Buzz Williams has built. The emotional investment and closeness as a team can help lift the team to new heights, but it can be hard to shake those negative feelings sometimes when things don't go your way.

All of this to say, this video from Texas A&M basketball is an emotional one. You see the joy and excitement from every member fo the team immediately, with Henry Coleman's reaction of jubilation standing out.

Then come the emotions. Transfer Eli Lawrence, who hasn't seen the floor a whole lot, gets a lot of love from his teammates as he soaks in the moment—a moment that, at that time, is bringing him to tears. For a graduate transfer playing his last year of collegiate basketball, this has to mean a lot.

He's not the only one, either. Wade Taylor, embracing one of the coaches on staff, is moved to the point of tears as well. Doubtless he is reflecting on the difficulty of the season up until that point, the heartbreak of the last two years, and everything else that has brought him and this team to that moment.

This team is easy to root for. Well, on a basketball level, they can be extremely frustrating to root for—but on the human level, I don't know that you could find another team in the nation that's a more tightly-knit group. Here's hoping they make a run to remember.