Texas A&M basketball fans will be glad to never have to see Emanuel Sharp any more in the NCAA Tournament, as he has now led the Cougars to two wins over the Aggies in March Madness. He was a key piece in Houston's victory over Texas A&M tonight, one in which the Cougars ended up triumphing by more than thirty points.
Texas A&M was in the game for quite some time, but an 18-0 run by Sharp and the Cougars really took the wind out of Texas A&M's sails late in the first half, and they never recovered. Asked about that run, Sharp did his best to be respectful of the Aggies, but his answer laid bare exactly what Aggie fans saw the entire night: Texas A&M's effort was not near where it needed to be in this game.
Houston's Emanuel Sharp calls out Texas A&M's lack of effort in March Madness loss
Sharp credited several different factors for the run, but for him, it really boiled down to this:
"We just had great effort. I really felt in the first half like we were playing harder than them. Usually, when we're playing harder than the other team, we're going to win."Emanuel Sharp
That's what Aggie fans saw the entire night, and the reverse has been true all season as well: when Texas A&M is the higher-effort team, they tend to win instead. That's not at all what happened in this one.
Texas A&M has an effort problem when things start to get away from them. That's how you get outrebounded by seventeen, and that's how you lose game after game— it's what happened in the SEC Tournament, and it's what we've just seen out of this team.
The Aggies will have an entire offseason and roster churn to fix some of these issues. The arrow is pointing up for Bucky McMillan and crew, and this season was an overachievement all things considered, but if they are going to start to be judged by a championship standard, some things have to change.