C.E. King’s Tyshawn Archie joins A&M from McNeese<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s been amazing, the other schools I went to were far, a lot of my family wouldn\u2019t be able to come,\u201d Haggerty said. \u201cNow (A&M is) an hour and a half (away) a lot of my family will be able to come and show a lot of love and support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Texas A&M coach Bucky McMillan said Haggerty has impressed the staff with his willingness to involve teammates rather than focus solely on scoring.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhat I appreciate the most about PJ is he is trying to make the right play,\u201d McMillan said. \u201cHe is a lead return scorer for college basketball you\u2019d think he would just be searching for shots but he\u2019s really trying to make the right play and play hard on both sides of the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haggerty said he hopes to impact games beyond putting points on the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI can control the pace of the game, give my teammates the ball and have a lot of shooters I can hit,\u201d Haggerty said.<\/p>\n
When he was asked what he hopes to improve for the upcoming season, Haggerty said defense was his top priority.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say defense, try to speed up ball handlers, just being more like a play maker and not just scoring the ball, but giving my teammates the ball.\u201d\u00a0 Haggerty said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Last season Haggerty averaged 1.2 steals and 5.3 rebounds both were down from his previous 2024-25 and 2023-24 seasons.\u00a0His assist have remained consistent in his past three seasons sitting around 3.8 per game.<\/p>\n
Haggerty\u2019s arrival comes during a significant offseason transition for Texas A&M and McMillan as he enters his second year as head coach. The Aggies entered the portal looking to replenish a roster that lost seven seniors and several key players, including their top scorer in Rashaun Agee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c(Haggerty) came here, he wants to win and he knows if he wants to win, he\u2019s got to involve others and he\u2019s been trying to do that more, I think he\u2019s gonna pay off for our team,\u201d McMillan said.<\/p>\n
Despite the turnover of players, Texas A&M assembled one of the nation\u2019s top transfer classes, adding six portal commitments and earning a No. 11 ranking in 247Sports\u2019 transfer portal rankings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Haggerty said the new-look roster has already shown promise during summer workouts.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI would say we got a lot of different things; we are versatile, we got bigs, shooters, guards, defense, we got a lot of great weapons,\u201d Haggerty said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The portal newcomers, forward Jalen Shelly,\u00a0 point guard Jalen Reece, forward Cade Phillips, guard Luka Walls and guard Tyshawn Archie, will be tasked with helping the Aggies navigate what is expected to be another challenging SEC schedule.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SEC has been the best league the last two, three years and will be the best league this year,\u201d McMillan said. \u201cI think it\u2019ll be the best it\u2019s ever been this year and when I look at it, and we just got the schedule back, what our schedule will be, we will have the second hardest schedule in the league.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last year Texas A&M finished sixth in the SEC with a 11-7 conference record.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Aggies have also added guard Bryson Warren, who was a five-star prospect out of Little Rock Central. Warren has never played college basketball. He was drafted 13th overall by the Sioux Falls Skyforce in the 2023 NBA G League Draft. Warren played 21 games for the NBA G League on the Westchester Knicks last season averaging 19.8 points, 3.1 rebounds, 5 assists and 1.2 steals.<\/p>\n
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For both McMillan, Haggerty and the rest of the team the expectations for the season remain simple.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWin. I would say that is the first thing, I mean at the end of the day you do a lot of things in basketball, but if you don\u2019t win it doesn\u2019t really matter,\u201d Haggerty said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas A&M’s PJ Haggerty in a recent practice with the Aggies. Texas A&M Athletics\/Courtesy Texas A&M Athletics COLLEGE…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-352570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352570","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=352570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}