{"id":37497,"date":"2025-11-06T03:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T03:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/37497\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T03:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T03:28:09","slug":"texas-am-looks-to-build-off-strong-debut-showing-vs-texas-southern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/37497\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas A&#038;M looks to build off strong debut showing vs. Texas Southern"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"VideoPlayer-backgroundImage\" alt=\"default-cbs-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762399689_685_video-slate.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Bucky Ball is off to a quick start at <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/college-basketball\/teams\/TEXAM\/texas-am-aggies\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Texas A&amp;M<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>New Aggies coach Bucky McMillan guided his team to a 98-68 win Monday night in its season opener against Northwestern State (La.). The Aggies shot 49.3% from the field while forcing 16 turnovers and earning a 48-24 advantage in points in the paint.<\/p>\n<p>Texas A&amp;M will try to build on that performance Thursday night when it hosts <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/college-basketball\/teams\/TEXSO\/texas-southern-tigers\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Texas Southern<\/a> in College Station.<\/p>\n<p>Ruben Dominguez pumped in 18 points on Monday night, going 4-of-7 on 3-pointers, and Federiko Federiko tallied eight points and eight rebounds. Defensively, the Aggies limited the Demons to 23-of-58 shooting (39.7%) from the field.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This team is way further ahead than I would&#8217;ve expected with this many new players,&#8221; McMillan said. &#8220;But we need to have 40 minutes of unrelenting effort. Half-court defense got beat too much. We need to be more aggressive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>McMillan, who guided Samford to the Southern Conference title in 2024 and nearly shocked Kansas in a first-round matchup, brought in nearly an entire new roster. Texas A&amp;M was tabbed for a 13th-place finish in the 16-team Southeastern Conference.<\/p>\n<p>While the Aggies found early success, Texas Southern did not. The Tigers fell 98-43 Monday night at No. 21 Gonzaga in their season opener, making just 15 of 59 attempts from the field and being trounced 56-27 on the boards.<\/p>\n<p>Texas Southern, which finished fourth in the Southwestern Athletic Conference last season, has been picked to place fifth in 2025-26. Its top returning player is senior guard Zaire Hayes, a preseason second-team All-SWAC choice after averaging 10.4 points per game last season and connecting on 47 3-pointers.<\/p>\n<p>Hayes sat out Monday night, and the Tigers simply didn&#8217;t have the firepower to hang with the Zags. Jaylen Wysinger and Duane Posey each scored eight points to lead the attack, with Wysinger making 2 of 5 3-pointers. The rest of the team was 1-for-16.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Field Level Media<\/p>\n<p class=\"StatsincCopyrightTwo\">\n    Copyright 2025 STATS LLC and Field Level Media. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Field Level Media is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bucky Ball is off to a quick start at Texas A&amp;M. New Aggies coach Bucky McMillan guided his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2692,27,260,29,28,20703],"class_list":{"0":"post-37497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-college-basketball","9":"tag-texas","10":"tag-texas-am-aggies","11":"tag-texas-headlines","12":"tag-texas-news","13":"tag-texas-southern-tigers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37497","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=37497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}