Aggies at a loss to explain skid
COLLEGE STATION — One surprising streak of two must end on Saturday, and odds are it won’t be the one Texas A&M hopes to douse.
The Aggies have lost seven consecutive games entering Auburn Arena, where they’ve won five straight since joining the SEC in 2012. A&M coach Buzz Williams has opted to embrace the second streak as cause for optimism against the nation’s top-ranked team.
“You can argue that they’re the best team in the country with perhaps the most talent and highest number of NBA prospects,” Williams said of the semi-high-flying Tigers. “All that is good because it will give us a gauge … (there) will be energy against us, but maybe it will help fuel our energy.”
War Eagle isn’t flying quite as high as it was when the week started, after losing at unranked Arkansas on Tuesday.
“We hadn’t lost since November,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said. “We understand the prize is on our head.”
Eight years ago and with thenAggies coach Billy Kennedy struggling in his third season in College Station, plenty of irate A&M fans hungry for a proven winner pitched Pearl as Kennedy’s potential replacement. Instead, Auburn in 2014 hired the former Tennessee coach with a checkered past concerning the NCAA straight and narrow, even if he couldn’t recruit over the first few months for the Tigers.
Pearl in 2011 was fired from Tennessee, where he led the Volunteers to six NCAA Tournaments in all six of his seasons in Knoxville, Tenn., for lying to the NCAA regarding the recruitment of a player, and he received what amounted to a three-year suspension by the NCAA.
The expressive coach has since reversed the fortunes of Auburn (22-2, 10-1 SEC), although he missed the NCAA postseason in his first three seasons at a university best known for football. The Tigers advanced to the program’s first Final Four in 2019, however, and are currently enjoying their first No. 1 ranking in the Associated Press top 25 poll.
“There are a lot of good teams in our league, and we know we don’t have much margin for error,” Pearl said. “We know the position that we’re in, and we worked hard to put ourselves in this position.”
The Aggies have not been one of those good teams in the long run, but they were for nearly the first quarter of SEC play. They won their first four league games and were 15-2 overall prior to their seven-game skid. Williams has lost seven straight games only once prior in his career, and that was in his first season at Virginia Tech in 2014-15.
The current slide of the Aggies (15-9, 4-7) is surprising in that Williams had plenty of success in his third season at his previous two stops: Marquette and Virginia Tech. He took the Golden Eagles to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament in year three and he returned the Hokies to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade in year three.
The best chance for his third team at A&M to make the NCAA Tournament is winning the SEC tournament in Nashville, Tenn., a long shot and something the Aggies have never done.
“You can go through all of it,” Williams said of examining the Aggies’ multiple close losses in conference play. “That’s not a justification for failure — but there is not an easy answer. One thing that is conclusive … we need to play at a fervor pitch on both ends of the floor.”
Williams and the Aggies have stunned a ranked Auburn squad on its home court before. Two years ago the Tigers were No. 17 when A&M pulled off a 78-75 upset.
“It was an incredible environment,” Williams said of Auburn students being allowed to sit in lower-bowl seats often reserved in other venues for fans paying much higher ticket prices. “And I would anticipate it will be even better on Saturday.”