{"id":122807,"date":"2026-01-14T13:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/122807\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T13:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T13:00:15","slug":"what-texas-am-hc-bucky-mcmillan-said-following-loss-at-tennessee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/122807\/","title":{"rendered":"What Texas A&M HC Bucky McMillan Said Following Loss At Tennessee"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\"\"<\/a>Photo via Texas A&M Basketball on X (Twitter)\/ @aggiembk<\/p>\n

Tennessee basketball handed Texas A&M its first loss of SEC play Wednesday night, knocking off the Aggies 87-82 in double overtime. The Vols trailed for the vast majority of the game before taking a late lead and finding a way to get it done in double overtime.<\/p>\n

Following the game, Texas A&M head coach Bucky McMillan met with the media and discussed foul trouble, his thoughts on Nate Ament and more. Here\u2019s everything McMillan said.<\/a><\/p>\n

More From RTI:\u00a0Everything Rick Barnes Said Following Tennessee Basketball Overtime Win At Texas A&M<\/a><\/p>\n

Opening statement<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo good teams. Didn\u2019t come out on the right side. Could have gone either way, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tennessee doing a better job of handling the press late in the game<\/p>\n

\u201cThey put us in\u2014 we were in the double bonus. So we couldn\u2019t\u2014\u00a0We had two guys with four fouls. That\u2019s what I hate about college basketball. It doesn\u2019t reset in overtime. I feel like it should reset, you know what I mean? Because it\u2019s a new game. But you\u2019re sitting there in the double bonus. So they like, the chance of them calling fouls to put them on the line, it hurt us. So we couldn\u2019t pressure as hard, but either way, they didn\u2019t turn the ball over as much.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the message to his players after the game<\/p>\n

\u201cBasketball is so funny because, you know, maybe we make another free throw or Ruben makes that three, you know, we are walking out here feeling different, but it\u2019s right here\u2019s the same kind of thing. Right? So you just can\u2019t get so results oriented. So we\u2019re heading in the right direction. Like that\u2019s the biggest thing. We\u2019re heading in the right direction and just got to keep chucking along. Right. I mean it\u2019s a game where a play here, a free throw there, a shot here, shot there could, could have left us with a greater feeling getting on that plane, right? But when we\u2019re down there at Auburn, if they made the last three. We\u2019d be feeling different about that one too. So the only thing you can focus on is keep battling, keep getting better every day. And we certainly have done that.\u201d<\/p>\n

On what he liked about their first half performance<\/p>\n

\u201cWe held Tennessee on their home floor to a very low percentage shooting from the field. We held them under 30% from the field (in) the first half. And for the game, we held them under 40. That\u2019s usually going to result in good things happening for you, right? We\u2019re seriously undersized. We see that. We\u2019re not the biggest team. We had our forward Mackenzie Mgbako broke his foot. So we\u2019re playing smaller than we wish. They\u2019re physical, they\u2019re big, they rebound well. We couldn\u2019t clean the glass, but for the first shot we guarded them pretty dang good.\u201d<\/p>\n

On what Nate Ament did well down the stretch<\/p>\n

\u201cGood player. Long. They did a good job getting the ball, trying to shoot over us. He\u2019s a hard guy to stop him getting shot off. When it becomes a possession by possession game where ones, twos or three don\u2019t matter, just buckets matter, he\u2019s tough because he can shoot right over you kind of in the mid range, which not a lot of people, not a lot of people do. And it kind of became that game where it\u2019s just like, how can you find any way to score? You know what I mean? He was able to do that. They did a good job. They got it to him at the nail and he did a good job.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Texas A&M\u2019s consistent answers to Tennessee\u2019s runs<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were right there, man. Like the reason why all of our players are able to perform at that level and we\u2019re here to begin with is because we feel we should win these games. You know what I mean? And like, I feel that. We all feel that we should win this game coming in here. We feel that\u2019s a disappointing loss for us. And so I think it\u2019s just the spirit of our team. Not happy to be their kind of attitude. Just want to get it done and I feel we should get it done. So I think that we don\u2019t wilt in these moments right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

On if the ability to turn Tennessee over was a strong message going in<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I mean, we play how we play and we live with it. I mean sometimes it could be turnover, sometimes bad shot, sometimes pace, right? We play how we play it and we did a great job with making it a full-court game in ways and they play how they play. They did a great job of playing power-high football and rebounding over us. Like they do a great job of it. So both teams kind of had on display what they do well, you know what I mean? And they like to score it at the free-throw line and around the rim. We\u2019re more of a three-point shooting, like the score from behind the line. We like to get it up and down a little bit more on defense. They like to kind of make it a boxing match in the half court. So that\u2019s what makes basketball fun. Styles make fights and two good fighters out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo via Texas A&M Basketball on X (Twitter)\/ @aggiembk Tennessee basketball handed Texas A&M its first loss of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21398,33616,27,6095,29,28],"class_list":["post-122807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-rick-barnes","tag-tennessee-basketball","tag-texas","tag-texas-am-basketball","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}