SEC Basketball: Georgia, Mississippi State, Alabama rise in latest power rankings
By Joey Loose
8. Texas A&M (9-6, 0-2)
Buzz Williams returned home to Texas in 2019 when he took over this Aggies program and he got to work. The first few seasons were a certain rebuilding effort, but his next two showed the results, leading the Aggies to the NIT title game in 2022 before a 15-3 SEC record and second round trip in last year’s NCAA Tournament. Based on this projection, even more was expected of the Aggies this season, though that simply hasn’t been the case.
Texas A&M won their first five games of the season, including road wins at Ohio State and SMU. They added a third Quad 1 win against Iowa State in late November. Unfortunately, they’ve played a very heavy schedule, and lost to some solid teams, namely Houston, Memphis, Virginia, and Florida Atlantic. This wasn’t the end of the world for the Aggies, but their start to SEC play has been quite disappointing, falling by 15 points at home to LSU before another double-digit loss to Auburn earlier this week.
Though injuries have hampered this team at times, the combination of Henry Coleman, Tyrece Radford, and Wade Taylor IV is hard for most teams in this league to top. Regardless, the outside shooting has been dreadful in recent games and honestly for the entire season. The defense has taken a few steps forward this season, but Texas A&M simply has to play better in the weeks ahead. Losing like they did last week was unacceptable and they have major opportunities to bounce back into the top-half of this league.