Texas A&M lost all three games in the Orlando Invitational, falling 62-51 to Harvard, 65-42 to Temple and 67-62 to Fairfield.
The Aggies drop to 3-4 on the season after the three losses.
A&M coach Buzz Williams said he drew from A&M’s football team’s season in his message to the team before Friday’s game against Temple.
“One of the things that we talked about before the game was, kind of like football, time of possession,” Williams told 12thman.com. “We wanted to win the time of possession and too many times, we didn’t take that opportunity.”
Though they weren’t successful in their mission to dominate time of possession, the Aggies tied their season-low of 13 turnovers on Friday.
On Friday, A&M also tallied a season-high 10 offensive rebounds and shot 76.9 percent from the free throw line, marking their best percentage from the line this season.
Against the Owls, senior Wendell Mitchell hauled in a season-high six rebounds. Senior Josh Nebo led the team with 12 points and six rebounds, marking his fourth consecutive game with double-digit points.
“Other than the last three minutes of the second half I thought our fight was much better,” Williams told 12thman.com. “The lowest number of turnovers thus far this season, highest number of offensive rebounds this season. And I think in an unspoken way those are byproducts of how hard we were fighting.”
A&M also had individual success on Sunday against Fairfield as junior guard Quenton Jackson notched a season-high 15 points.
In search of their first victories in the invitational, A&M and Fairfield came out with a fire. The two teams traded leads before A&M headed into halftime up 29-25.
In the first half, the Aggies converted eight of their 20 field goal attempts (40 percent) and five of their 13 three-point attempts (38 percent). A&M also held Fairfield to nine of 24 field goal attempts (38 percent).
After fighting through a tightly contested beginning to the second half, the Aggies led the Stags 42-41 until Fairfield went on a 20-10 run and took a 61-52 lead with 1:55 left in the game. Unfortunately, even with the three-point shooting of guard Savion Flagg that brought the Aggies to a three-point deficit, there simply wasn’t enough time for the Aggies to respond as free throws helped iced the game for the Stags.
Flagg ended with 17 points, with a 45 percent three-point shooting performance. Jackson set a season-high in points and assists with 15 points and five assists in the loss. Mitchell was the only other Aggie in double digit points with 14 in addition to his two steals. Mitchell also shot six-of-six from the free throw line.
After this tournament, the Aggies will face Texas in the Lonestar Showdown at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth on Dec. 8.