The Texas A&M men’s basketball season started with little chance of making the NCAA tournament, but a recent hot streak may soon put the Aggies back in the mix.
After starting the season 6-5 with losses to the likes of Memphis, Murray State, Boise State, Wofford, and Colorado, Buzz Williams’s team has won eight of its last nine ball games and started SEC play with a 6-1 record.
The lone conference loss was on the road against Kentucky, and the Aggies bounced back with a 79-63 upset at No.15 Auburn on Wednesday, ending the nation’s longest home winning streak at 28 games.
Tyrece Radford poured in 30 points as Texas A&M earned its second win over a ranked team this season and pulled into third place in the conference behind No. 2 Alabama and No. 4 Tennessee.
The Aggies are not ranked in the latest polls but have the best conference record among unranked SEC teams.
Radford, guard Wade Taylor IV and forward Julius Marble all average double figures in scoring, and the team is averaging 74.8 points per game while winning by an average of eight.
The streak started with a home win over Northwestern State on December 27 and continued through the first five games of conference play. During that time, Texas A&M beat Florida twice, LSU, and South Carolina and earned its first ranked win of the season against then-No.20 Missouri.
While the Aggies are still on the outside looking in of the NCAA tournament, according to bracketologists, their latest tear has undoubtedly helped their chances to make the field, and they could increase that exponentially if they keep playing this way.
CBS Sports recently listed Texas A&M as one of the top teams currently outside the field that can play their way in down the stretch.
In the article, Gary Parrish wrote, “Eight of Texas A&M’s final 12 regular-season games will be Quadrant 1 contests based on the current NET rankings.”
“If the Aggies continue their high-level play from recent weeks, they should win enough of those Quad-1 games to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time under Buzz Williams.”
The SEC is considered a strong conference this season, so Texas A&M still has plenty of work to do.
“I think they’re the second-best conference in the country,” TCU head coach Jamie Dixon said when asked about the conference and his team’s upcoming game against Mississippi State on Tuesday.
While most of the conference will face Big 12 teams as part of the SEC/Big 12 Challenge this weekend, Texas A&M will return to the floor against Vanderbilt on Saturday, hoping to boost its chances of making the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018.