Texas A&M men’s basketball enters Sunday’s matchup against A&M-Corpus Christi on a four-game losing streak.
The Aggies are coming off a 60-50 loss to rival Texas in the Lone Star Showdown in Fort Worth on Dec. 8.
A&M also dropped all three games in the Orlando Invitational to Harvard, Temple and Fairfield.
Against the Longhorns, A&M had 21 turnovers. Texas scored 22 points off of turnovers, while the Aggies managed only five points from the Longhorns’ 14 turnovers. A&M coach Buzz Wiliams said limiting those mistakes will be key for the Aggies moving forward.
“It’s not just that we turn it over and prevent a shot for the Aggies,” Williams said. “It gives the opponent another shot. We’ve been trying to address that and figure out how we can continue to place a premium on rebounds while at the same time figuring out how to slow down our turnover rate.”
One Aggie had success with rebounding against Texas, Williams said. Freshman forward Emanuel Miller had 14 rebounds.
“Fourteen rebounds in a college game as a freshman is really good,” Williams said. “That maybe prevented some shots by Texas because he was such a force on the glass.”
The turnover situation has been a focus in practice, freshman guard Andre Gordon said.
“It’s crazy how much we emphasize it,” Gordon said. “We restart after everything. We turnover the ball, we restart.”
With the struggles on offense that have popped up as of late, Williams said his team hasn’t had a chance to gameplan for Corpus Christi, and the Aggies are focusing on fixing their own mistakes first.
“We haven’t spent as much time on Corpus as we typically would because I don’t want to continue to give time [or] energy to an opponent when we are completely aware of what’s preventing us from giving ourselves the best chance to win.” Williams said. “We’ve spent all of our time thus far other than a little bit here and there on what we need to focus on.”
Corpus Christi is coming off a 81-53 win over St. Mary’s University on Dec. 7. Junior guard Savion Flagg said though A&M hasn’t focused much on its upcoming opponent, the Islanders are not to be overlooked.
“We have to treat each team with the same amount of respect, no matter the name on their jersey,” Flagg said. “It’s a game that we’re supposed to win, but we can’t go in there with that mentality.”
The Aggies will host A&M-Corpus Christi at 5 p.m. on Sunday.