No. 9 Texas A&M will travel to Auburn, Ala., to take on the No. 4 Tigers Friday afternoon. The Aggies were topped by No. 3 South Carolina in a close Halloween day competition and are still looking for their first SEC win of the season.
“Like any SEC team [Auburn tends] to be very solid,” A&M head coach Tana McKay said. “They do have a new western coach this year so I’ll be interested to see how that will change things. They also have new facilities and stuff like that so it’ll be a little bit of change compared to when we were there last year.”
Despite last week’s loss, McKay, now in her 15th season, says she’s happy with the Aggies performance.
“If we ride like we did at South Carolina, I’ll be ecstatic,” McKay said. “They rode to the best of their abilities — very few mistakes — which is the name of the game. I can’t ask any more from them. From there it’s just [the judge’s] opinion. They didn’t like what they saw on our end but it wasn’t because we messed up or that the girls did anything wrong. They rode really well so I can’t ask for anything else.”
McKay has confidence her team will be ready to play come Friday.
“We got a good week of practice and if they ride again like they did against South Carolina, that’s what we’re looking for,” McKay said. “As a coach I can’t ask for more. Their job is to take care of what they have control of in the arena. Be penalty-free, be mistake-free and have the best performance that they can. That’s what they did at South Carolina. Now let the chips fall where they may.”