No. 13 Texas A&M will look to its home court to help it recover from a heartrending loss when it squares off against Oklahoma on Tuesday in a Southeastern Conference matchup in College Station, Texas.
The Aggies (15-5, 4-3 SEC) head home after a stunning 70-69 loss at rival Texas on Saturday. Texas A&M led by 22 points with 17 minutes left but coughed it up when the Longhorns canned a layup with 3.7 seconds to play. Wade Taylor IV, who paced the Aggies with 15 points, missed a long 3-pointer at the buzzer.
“There’s a lot of lessons for us to learn,” Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams said. “We’ve been through this the last couple of weeks. I don’t think at this level you can ever think that anything is over. It’s never as easy as you think. At times in the second half, we weren’t accountable for what we have to do.”
Manny Obaseki added 13 points for Texas A&M, which played to its strengths, outrebounding the Longhorns 43-27 and garnering a 18-6 edge on the offensive glass that led to a 20-7 advantage in second-chance points.
Texas A&M leads all Division I teams in offensive rebounding with an average of 16.5 per contest.
The Aggies have been on the other side of last-minute comebacks, roaring back from 18 points down to beat Oklahoma in Norman in the first meeting between the teams and then rallying from an 11-point deficit to win at Ole Miss on Wednesday. But the loss to the Longhorns, whom the Aggies beat by 20 points at home on Jan. 4, was a tough pill to swallow.
“We’ll grow from it,” Williams said of the loss to Texas. “We’ll learn from it. We’ve been on the other end of it. That’s just part of what this is.”
The Sooners (15-4, 2-4 SEC) head to College Station after a 65-62 win at Arkansas on Saturday behind freshman Jeremiah Fears’ 16 points and 13 from Jalon Moore, including the go-ahead free throw with 1:15 left to play and a breakaway dunk at the buzzer.
“Everybody contributed — there was toughness and execution,” Oklahoma coach Porter Moser said of the win in Fayetteville, the Sooners’ first since Nov. 30, 2001.
It was Fears’ third straight outing with 16 or more points and his 18th double-digit effort in 19 contests this season.
Oklahoma has won two straight games after starting its first SEC season with four losses. The victory over Arkansas was the Sooners’ fourth Quad 1 win of the season.
“It’s the hardest league in the country,” Moore said of the conference. “Any chance to get a road win in this league is very important because it’s a quality win. We’ve got some big games coming up next week.”
The Sooners need the momentum as they continue the SEC gauntlet. Texas A&M is the first of five straight opponents ranked in the AP Top 25. That includes a home clash against Vanderbilt, which knocked off Tennessee and Kentucky a week apart, and a trip to No. 1 Auburn.
–Field Level Media
