With only one game remaining in the 2009-2010 regular season, the Texas A&M men’s basketball team’s game against Oklahoma Saturday in Norman has postseason implications.
The Aggies, currently tied for third place in Big 12 standings, would secure a first round bye in the Big 12 Championship tournament with a win over the Sooners.
A&M Head Coach Mark Turgeon said his team is a little banged up, and the extra rest would be nice.
“I haven’t talked about it much, but it’d be nice,” Turgeon said. “But as banged up as we are, it’d be big for us. But, if it doesn’t work for us, we’ll go over there and play four games in four days.”
The 10 conference wins by A&M this season is the most since the 2006-2007 Sweet Sixteen team that went 13-3 in the conference season, but the importance of an 11th is not diminished. The Aggies will need a win in Norman to have an unchallenged spot in the top four of the Big 12.
While a victory would guarantee the fourth seed, a win and a Baylor loss would give the Aggies the three seed; conversely, a loss would open the door for the Aggies to finish as low as sixth in the Big 12 standings.
Senior guard Donald Sloan said the task of winning against the Sooners on the road is a tall order.
“It’s going to be a hard game,” Sloan said. “We know how good they are, what kind of players they have and how they play at home. It’s going to be tough.”
With a 87-76 road loss on Monday to Texas, Oklahoma extended its losing streak to seven games.
Freshman guard Tommy Mason-Griffin has led Oklahoma in scoring in four of the seven losses, including a 30-point effort against Oklahoma State on Feb. 13.
Turgeon said despite Oklahoma’s recent struggles, the Sooners will be ready to fight for a win.
“Oklahoma this time of year, the team hasn’t performed the way they’d like,” Turgeon said.
“We know the team is going to give us a tough shot. No game is easy in this league.”
If the Aggies pull out a win on the road Saturday, the senior class on the A&M squad will tie last season’s seniors as the winningest class in A&M men’s basketball history.
Senior forward Bryan Davis said the opportunity to make that accomplishment is an important part of the game on Saturday.
“I told Josh [Carter] yesterday that we were going to take over his title,” Davis said. “Whenever we started the season off, that’s one thing we said – that we wanted to leave here as the winningest players to ever play here.”
The Aggies’ 22nd win on the season would send the team into the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City, Mo. on a three-game winning streak.
But Sloan said aside from all the implications this game has, it boils down to doing what the Aggies have done to be successful all year.
“If we focus in the next couple of days in practice and go up there with the mindset that we’re going to be the scrappiest team, I don’t think we should have any problem coming out happy at the end of the game,” he said.