Down 14 points at halftime, Texas A&M men’s basketball coach Bucky McMillan’s message to his team was simple.

“I really challenged them about their heart,” McMillan said. “ … We are a high-variance team. We’re never out of a game. And so I knew eventually we would make threes at some point.”

And while the Aggies were able to rally back to force overtime, they didn’t have enough left in the tank as they fell 93-80 to the SMU Mustangs in the Hoop Hype XL showcase, a neutral-site non-conference showdown, at the College Park Center in Arlington on Dec. 7.

“The thing about this sport is that it leaves such a bad taste in your mouth,” McMillan said. “But if you stop that game with 40 seconds left when we had the ball, everybody would be talking about how this group really has a lot of fight, a lot of hardness and has improved.”

Based on the situation at halftime, there weren’t very many members of the mostly-maroon crowd who would have thought overtime was even a possibility.

A&M played easily the worst first half of Bucky Ball it has played all year against SMU. A&M shot just 27% from the field in the first half and closed the opening frame by going 1-of-16 from the field.

And especially worrisome for a team that relies on perimeter shooting, the Aggies also went a combined 1-of-16 from behind the arc in the first half.

After the Aggies jumped out to an early 10-2 lead, the Mustangs went on an 8-0 run to tie things up at 10-10 just after the first media timeout. And that’s where the trouble began for A&M, as after that initial lead, SMU went on a 39-17 run to close the half. 

SMU 7-foot-2 sophomore center Samet Yiğitoğlu proved to be a Turkish delight for Mustang fans in the first half, as he had 10 points while shooting 5-of-6 from the field. The Mustangs had 24 points in the paint in the first half, while the Aggies had just 27 total points.

That’s when the turnaround began.

The Aggies’ offense channeled their inner Toon Squad of “Space Jam” fame to begin the second half, hitting six straight shots from the field to cut the Mustangs’ lead down to just five points with just under 13 minutes left in the game.

A&M’s frontcourt was a major contributor to that early revival — but not always in the paint. Junior forward Mackenzie Mgbako and graduate student F Rashaun Agee each hit 3-pointers early in the second half, while graduate student F Federiko Federiko threw down a pair of slams including one that made things a one-possession game with 12 minutes left and sent the traveling contingent of the 12th Man to its feet. 

Agee and Mgbako each ended the night with 13 points, and Agee added 11 rebounds for a double-double.

But graduate student guard Marcus Hill was the engine behind the Aggies’ comeback. He contributed 16 second-half points to his total of 25, added seven rebounds and a pair of assists on top of that. 

“We shot more free throws than they did, which was great, which we’ve done pretty much every game,” McMillan said. “Attacking the charge circle, and we’re going to get to the line because of that. Marcus is a big part of that.”

But the player of the game was SMU’s senior G Jaron Pierre Jr. who led all scorers with 35 points. 

“Eveyrthing was working for me,” Pierre said. “From mid range, to threes … to playing defense. I mean, I just kept playing my game the whole time. So that’s what really kept me going.”

Mgbako gave the Aggies their first lead since the 14:45 mark in the first half with a fastbreak layup with just over two minutes left to play. It turned out that 40 minutes of basketball wasn’t enough to decide things, as junior G Pop Isaacs’ clutch 3-pointer to make it a four-point game was enough of a buffer for a late SMU rally to send things to overtime.

“We made some really, really silly turnovers,” SMU coach Andy Enfield said. “Their pressure, they pressed the whole game, and I think our guys lost their minds for a second because they went on that big run, and we missed a couple of easy shots, and then we turned it over a couple times, and also we’ve been leading the whole game and now we’re down four with under a minute left.”

Yiğitoğlu fouled out early in overtime after making contact with Agee, but his loss wasn’t enough to rally the Aggies in the extra period. A&M couldn’t hit a single shot in overtime, while SMU went on a 14-1 run to close things out and pull away for the 93-80 win.

Next, A&M returns to Reed Arena for a buy game against Jacksonville at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 14.