Aggies rally, end four-game skid
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M won for the first time in five games and for the first time in nearly a month, finally exhaling with a 63-60 comeback victory over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Sunday night in Reed Arena.
“We needed it pretty bad,” guard Jay Jay Chandler said. “In the locker room, we said it had been since Nov. 20, the last time we got a win. Every game matters now.”
The Aggies snapped a fourgame losing streak that included sometimes embarrassing setbacks to Harvard, Temple, Fairfield and Texas.
The last time they had won was the last time they played at Reed: a 56-52 comeback victory over Troy 26 days ago.
“That’s a long time,” A&M firstyear coach Buzz Williams said. “Maybe not in the world you (reporters) live in, but in this world, it’s an eternity.”
After trailing by 11 two minutes into the second half, the Aggies (4-5) snatched a 48-47 lead with an alley-oop dunk by Josh Nebo on a perfect lob from Andre Gordon with about nine minutes left in the game.
The teams then traded leads before the last minute of action put a the few thousand fans in the 13,000-seat arena on the edges of their seats. Gordon made two free throws with 35 seconds remaining to lift the Aggies to a 60-58 lead, and Savion Flagg made the first of two free throws with nine seconds left for a bit more breathing room.
The Islanders’ Jashawn Talton was whistled for traveling following his rebound of Flagg’s miss on the second free throw, and the Aggies escaped with the victory.
The Islanders (4-6) jumped to a 31-24 halftime lead thanks to 18 points from Jordan Hairston in the first 20 minutes, and he wound up with a game-high 25. The freshman guard was 6-of-7 from the field in the first half, all of which were from 3-point range.
“I’m disappointed for our guys because we played well enough to win,” said Islanders coach Willis
Wilson, who previously coached at Rice. “The difference down the stretch is A&M did a good job of trusting the things they do. … I like the direction we’re going. My biggest disappointment is just the loss.”
The Aggies like the direction of freshman forward Emanuel Miller of Ontario, Canada. He led them with a season-high 20 points, going 7-of-8 from the field and making all six of his free throws.
His hot hand Sunday kept the Aggies from a fifth consecutive setback early in the Williams tenure.
“We had more of an urgency to fight,” Miller said of the Aggies’ response to being down by double digits to the Islanders early in the second half.
The Aggies will try to cobble together their second winning streak of the season when they host Oregon State on Saturday night.
They break a couple of days for Christmas before hosting Texas Southern on Dec. 30 in advance of Southeastern Conference play, which cranks up Jan. 4 at Arkansas.