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KBTX Senior Texas A&M Sportswriter(KBTX)<\/p>\nCOLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – With the Aggies dragging a four-game losing streak into Wednesday\u2019s Quadrant III matchup with a down Ole Miss squad, Texas A&M head coach Bucky McMillan knew what losing could mean for the Aggies\u2019 postseason chances.<\/p>\n
It just wasn\u2019t something the team talked about prior to A&M\u2019s end-of-game surge to take the narrow 80-77 win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to tell you the truth,\u201d McMillan said after the game. \u201cThat was a must-win game. That was a must-win game and our guys came through.\u201d<\/p>\n
By holding Ole Miss scoreless in the final three minutes of the game, this Aggie squad proved they had enough gas left in the tank to claw back to victory over an Ole Miss squad that ranked No. 92 in the NET rankings and third-to-last in the Southeastern Conference standings. However, the 28 minutes of the game in which A&M trailed, by as many as 13 in the second half, failed to reveal whether the engine would continue to turn over as the Aggies close out the season on the NCAA tournament bubble.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, when fatigue sets into a basketball player\u2019s body, it manifests itself in reduced defensive effectiveness and increased inefficiency on longer shots. The player loses their legs.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a phenomenon not uncommon to this Bucky Ball squad. Throughout the Aggies\u2019 7-1 start to the SEC slate, the Aggies ran opponents into the ground with a nonstop full-court press and up-tempo offense.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma head coach Porter Moser said as much after the Aggies\u2019 83-76 win over the Sooners in early January.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I recall, a bunch of [the Sooner\u2019s shots] fell short and when they\u2019re short, that\u2019s fatigue,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I thought they played deeper. I thought their bench was deeper than ours and I thought that just kind of wore out and it kind of played out.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the season, the Aggies have shot 37% from 3-point range, which ranks 34th in the country. Their defensive rating is 107.5, which ranks 107th in the nation. Over the last five games, not including Wednesday\u2019s win, A&M has shot 36%, which ranks 109th in the country, and has a defensive rating of 121.5, which ranks 321st. There are 365 teams in Division I basketball.<\/p>\n
This was most evident in A&M\u2019s 82-69 loss at Vanderbilt, where McMillan admitted his team was running on empty.<\/p>\n
\u201cVanderbilt was our worst-effort game and I\u2019m going to put that on me,\u201d McMillan said. \u201cI didn\u2019t do a good job getting the recovery right for them. I mean, they\u2019re coming to me at the first four minutes of the game like, \u2018I can\u2019t feel my legs.\u2019 Not complaining, just, \u2018Coach, I need a sub.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s game began with a similar look. Before an 8-2 run in the latter minutes of the first half, A&M was averaging 0.87 points per possession. The Aggies went through a 3-for-21 shooting skid to close out the first half and allowed Ole Miss to carry a five-point lead into the break. Ole Miss finished with a 111.9 offensive rating, which is the third-highest of any of A&M\u2019s conference wins this season, trailing wins over Auburn (120.4) and Texas (112.6). It was the Rebels\u2019 second-highest offensive rating in a regulation conference game this season.<\/p>\n
However, with the game \u2014 and most likely the season \u2014 on the line, the Aggies were able to find another gear. Ruben Dominguez, the sharpshooter who has been anything but sharp as of late, drained a 3-pointer with just under three minutes to play to begin a 9-0 game-winning run. A layup by Zach Clemence pulled the Aggies back within one and Rashaun Agee hit one in the paint to give the Aggies their first lead of the second half with under two minutes to play.<\/p>\n
A&M\u2019s defense kept the Rebels out of the paint and forced Ole Miss to miss five 3-pointers to close out the game.<\/p>\n
The Aggies\u2019 effort in the waning minutes was proof to McMillan that his team\u2019s legs are not gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought that we were really strong late,\u201d he said. \u201cBoth teams shot a very high percentage from the field in the second half. They shot 55%; we shot 61%. But, I swear, I felt we looked fresh. I felt good if we were going to overtime.\u201d<\/p>\n
The road only gets harder from here. The Aggies travel to Oklahoma and Arkansas before hosting Texas and Kentucky. The season ends at LSU. <\/p>\n
Does A&M have the gas to get there? It will be up to this team\u2019s ability to recover more than their ability to press as the season hits the stretch run. <\/p>\n
KBTX senior A&M sportswriter Travis L. Brown can be reached at travis.brown@kbtx.com.<\/p>\n
KBTX Senior Texas A&M Sportswriter(KBTX)<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KBTX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – With the Aggies dragging a four-game losing streak into Wednesday\u2019s Quadrant III matchup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24264,9910,27,3042,29,28],"class_list":["post-170961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-bucky-mcmillan","tag-ole-miss","tag-texas","tag-texas-am","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170961","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=170961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}