After starting the regular season with a nail-biting 64-61 loss to the UCF Knights the No. 13 Texas A&M men’s basketball team made their home debut against East Texas A&M. The Aggies secured their first win of the season after defeating the Lions 87-55.
Despite dropping the first game of a hopeful season for Aggie men’s hoops, coach Buzz Williams rolled out an identical starting lineup against the Lions. Perhaps the most controversial player returning to the starting lineup for the Maroon and White was graduate guard Hayden Heffner, who went scoreless in Orlando, Florida.
Heffner silenced the naysayers with two early three-pointers to give the Aggies an early advantage. Going band for band with Heffner from long range was teammate graduate G Wade Taylor IV.
Early success from three combined with a stubborn 2-3 defense while switching between full-court and halfcourt presses put A&M up early over the visitors. The Aggies overwhelmed the Lions to a 33-12 lead with 7:29 left to play in the first half.
Going up 50-24 at halftime one key takeaway was the Aggie’s aggression rebounding the ball. A&M led the nation in offensive rebounding in the 2023 season and hauled in seven first-half offensive boards versus East Texas. This earned the Fightin’ Farmers 13 first-half second-chance points.
Starting the second half Heffner secured his third three of the game which he followed up with his second block of the contest as fans in attendance jumped out of their seats. After struggling in game one Williams touched on what his efficiency meant from a coach’s perspective.
“Yeah, he’s going to be in that group that we got to figure out,” Williams said. “Relative to the last 25 high major games we’ve played in. Obviously, Hayden has been a part of all of those, including the two high major teams we played in October.”
The Aggies kept consistently making shots in the second half while forcing misses on the defensive side of the ball, as the home team eventually extended its lead to 31 points, going up 72-41 with 9:00 remaining.
Leading the Aggies in the second half was Senior G Zhuric Phelps, who made his debut dawning the Maroon and White. The SMU transfer faced off against his little brother in an old-fashion sibling rivalry.
“How many brothers play division one basketball?” Williams said. “That has to be a low number and then a drastically even lower number that they would play against one another… but the fact he was cleared and was able to participate in this game, I think is a special, special thing for his entire family.”
Bettors were surely keeping a close eye as this game came to a close as BetMGM had the Aggies as +30.5 favorites. With the Maroon and White lead flipping back and forth, gamblers have senior G Manny Obaseki to thank as he secured the closing bucket to earn A&M a 32 point victory, 87-55.
There would be one bad beat, as when the buzzer hit all zeros both teams held a combined score of 142 points which fell short of the over/under which BetMGM set a 143.5 by tip-off.
The biggest factor in the Aggies’ dominant performance was the defensive tenacity which saw them force the Lions to turn the ball over 18 times, which the Fightin’ Farmers capitalized on scoring 25 points off turnovers.
“That’s our strong foundation,” Phelps said. “We play aggressive, try to force turnovers, just stay true to our foundation.”
Five players scored in double digits after only having two hit the mark in the team’s season opener, with the ability to get a bucket playing a pivotal role in the victory.
“There’s a lot of good players on this team,” Obaseki said. “But not only that, good quality guys, good quality people that work hard, I think that’s our staple of this program. I don’t really find a surprise when I see five, six guys in double figures.”
A recurring struggle for the Maroon and White from their first game was poor free throw shooting, the Aggies went 14-24 from the charity stripe coming in at 58%.
“I don’t think Zhuric will miss four free throws again, personally,” Williams said. “I have been encouraged by Pharrel … He shot 2500 free throws that I rebounded in the month of October, and this morning, he was 100 free throw makes out of 126 attempts. He is aware we need him to shoot a higher percentage.”
The Aggies 87-55 win makes them 1-1 on the season, with the programs toughest out of conference schedule to date, the team will need to figure out things fast Willaims said.
“Not to be negative towards East Texas, but we got to start sorting through that,” Williams said. “Because we’re playing less East Texas than we’ve ever played since we’ve been here, and we’re playing more quad ones and quad twos than we ever have.
A&M is back in action as it prepares to take on the Lamar Cardinals at 7 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 11, in Reed Arena airing on SEC Network.
