When it comes to free throws, making 28-of-48 attempts is starkly grim. For supposedly free points, the 12th Man groaned when A&M free throw attempts repeatedly crashed off the back rim.
In a normal world, missing 20 free throws is a pure recipe for disaster of a blowout game — and it had the makings of it in College Station. At the 10-minute mark of the second half, No. 5 Alabama had pulled away with a 15-point lead in a quiet Reed Arena. Yet when the final buzzer sounded, the Crimson Tide stood victorious by a mere six-point margin over No. 10 Texas A&M.
Though the Maroon and White dropped its first ever top-10 matchup as the host, it showed off its grit-and-grind brand of basketball yet again.
“I have a great admiration for the fight that [the players] were playing with,” coach Buzz Williams said. “The cohesiveness that they’re playing with, the togetherness and ‘never give up’ [attitude]. I have an unquantifiable love for who they are.”
Free throws, free throws, free throws
When it comes to beating a top-five team in the country that boasts the nation’s number one scoring offense, execution needs to be perfect. From offense and defense to the intangibles, it takes a 110% effort to win the game. For the Aggies, the hard-nosed, old-school paint bully ball worked out: They went to the line 48 times. Just by himself, junior forward Pharrel Payne had 15 attempts and knocked down 11 of them.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Maroon and White suffered a worse percentage. Though senior guard Zhuric Phelps had a team-high 24 points, the SMU transfer shot 5-of-10 from the charity stripe; senior G Jace Carter shot 4-for-8, the list goes on.
Though A&M managed to sink clutch free throws at the end to bring the game to a single possession, the missed opportunities doomed the team.
Sears seared hot
In the game’s first minutes, A&M did a great job of denying graduate G Mark Sears any looks and opportunities at the rim and closed out on every fake he threw out to hold him to zero points initially.
However, as the star veteran, he got his teammates involved.
Shooters in graduate G Chris Youngblood and sophomore G Aden Holloway got going and once the Aggies picked them up, Sears went to work. He started getting to his spots down low in the paint and once those dropped in easily, he got his 3-ball going.
In a flash of an eye, the Alabama native finished the first half with 15 points and closed out a 52-44 Alabama lead. However, in a mirror image of 20 minutes before, A&M found ways to slow him down. From the 1-2-2 full court press to sending doubles, Sears made the right plays every time, but when it came down to crunch time, he took every opportunity he got.
In a possession where Alabama had offensive boards twice and where Sears attempted three 3-pointers in mere seconds, he remained undeterred from his first two misses and knocked the last attempt down to silence Reed Arena.
Though A&M defended him well in the opening minutes of each half, the guard proved once again why he remained a top player in the country.
Second half guard sparks
While Aggies had Payne down low delivering much-needed points and free throws, the backcourt struggled mightily to get a rhythm going. However, an unsung hero rose up and stoked the fire of the comeback effort: graduate G Hayden Hefner.
Hefner, a usually reserved scorer, shot the ball with profound confidence, knocking down 5-of-12 shots and hitting timely threes in both halves to spark a loud Reed Arena. He also played the passing lanes effectively, disrupting Alabama set pieces that were supposed to end up in the corners and was responsible for arguably the game’s biggest moment: a transition put-back dunk that helped cut the lead to just five in the game’s closing moments.
On the cusp of the second-half comeback, Phelps worked his scorer magic once again. Coming off a 34-point bomb against Oklahoma, the guard finally found his stride late in the game, soaring in for easy buckets at the rim, and though he missed his first five three-point attempts, his first made one came at the perfect time.
Zhu from the arc!!#GigEm pic.twitter.com/qX9sE47pP6
— Texas A&M Basketball (@aggiembk) January 12, 2025
To have this production and confidence despite the odds — and especially without star graduate G Wade Taylor IV — is a positive takeaway for the Aggies as they head into Rupp Arena on Tuesday, Jan. 14 against No. 6 Kentucky.
