College Basketball

Texas A&M Basketball: Aggies Need a Hot Streak and They Need It Now

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 12:55 p.m. ET

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Fansided, Matthew Bartlett/FanSided via Gig Em Gazette

The Texas A&M basketball team hosts the Missouri Tigers on Wednesday night in another all important contest for the still hopeful Aggies.

Although it’s not mathematically impossible, it looks like the Aggies won’t be defending their regular season SEC title. What remains to be seen is how far they’ll be able to get in March. Can you say NIT?

At 12-10 overall this team doesn’t have the resume to make a bid for the bubble, let alone an NCAA tournament berth. But they aren’t done yet.

Last year the Syracuse Orange earned a 10 seed in the tournament with a 19-13 regular season record. The bubble math gets complicated when it comes to those last few teams, but that example shows that the chances of the maroon and white going dancing are still alive – albeit small.

The recipe for an appearance in the Big Dance is winning. And it has to start now. Coming into Tuesday’s game with Texas A&M, the Missouri Tigers are 6-16 (1-9 SEC). The Aggies should roll past this team, just like they dispatched LSU in Reed Arena over the weekend.

The Road Ahead

Missouri is last in the SEC in scoring (69.3 points per game). The Tigers’ leading scorer Kevin Puryear averages 11.6 points per game. That’s 30th in the SEC. Puryear trails three Aggies: DJ Hogg (12.5), Admon Gilder (13.3), and Tyler Davis (14.0). Robert Williams is close behind, averaging 11 points per game, higher than Missouri’s next closest scorer Terrence Phillips (9.7).

The size of Davis and Williams on the interior combined with the recent hot hands of JC Hampton and Gilder should be enough to keep the margin fairly wide through the night.

If the Aggies can’t win against the Tigers it might be time to start asking some more challenging questions. For now, every game has become a must-win game.

There are eight regular season games left for Texas A&M. To earn their way into the conversation they must win six of them with at least one of those wins coming against Florida or Kentucky.

Then they’re going to need a deep SEC tournament run with at least a semi finals appearance. That’s a tall task, but at this point what do they have to lose? BTHO mizzou.

***Stats from ESPN, SEC Sports***

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