Aggies overwhelm St. Mary's in 63-50 victory

OKLAHOMA CITY — The matchup between 10-seed Texas A&M and 7-seed St. Mary’s seemed like a bad one for the Aggies. In reality, it proved to be an utter nightmare for the Gaels. 

Rashaun Agee scored a game-high 22 points and the Aggies forced St. Mary’s into a season-high 18 turnovers as A&M led throughout in a 63-50 win in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Thursday.

“They say styles make fights, but really players make fights. I challenged our guys to take their matchups more personal,” A&M coach Bucky McMillan said. “You have to fight for your baskets. Our guys took that challenge in this game. There was blood in their eyes.”

With their size and grinding defense, the Gaels appeared to have strengths that played to the Aggies’ weaknesses. But A&M, rested after an early exit from the SEC Tournament, jumped all over St. Mary’s with their rediscovered speed and pressing defense.

“We played our second worst game of the year in the SEC Tournament,” McMillan said. “I apologized to all the Aggies out there for the Oklahoma loss, but it helped us get ready for this game. It helped us understand just how hard we had to play in tournaments.”

The Aggies jumped out to a 9-0 lead out of the gate, with Agee scoring the first 7. A pair of 3-pointers by St. Mary’s Liam Campbell (15 points) cut A&M’s lead to 15-13 with 11:11 to go in the first half, but, in spite of their size disadvantage, the Aggies scored the next 6 points at the rim. Marcus Hill (4 points) scored on a layup, then forward Jamie Vinson (5 points) dunked an alley-oop lob from fellow big man Zach Clemence (3 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists). After a 3 by St. Mary’s Joshua Dent (18 points), Agee tomahawked a dunk after coming down the right baseline and getting a bounce pass from Clemence to push A&M’s lead back to 23-16. 

The Gaels then had a 6-0 run of their own to get within a point, but part of St. Mary’s disaster scenario came to be: Ruben Dominguez got hot. The Texas A&M guard scored 9 of his 11 points — and 9 of A&M’s next 11 points — with three straight 3-pointers. After Clemence banked in a 3, the Aggies had broken the game open and pushed a 1-point lead to 13 with 1:05 to go in the half.

The Aggies led 37-26 at halftime, and they gave the Gaels no chance to breathe after halftime. St. Mary’s averaged 11 turnovers per game, a number they had matched at halftime. Things got no better for the WCC power as the Aggies continued to frustrate them into turnovers and missed shots at short range. A&M proceeded to score the first 7 points of the second half on a 3-pointer from Pop Isaacs, a slashing layup from point guard Jacari Lane and a tough basket from Agee to push the lead to 18. The Aggies were never seriously challenged after that, as their furious effort at the defensive end completely took the Gaels out of their game. 

Taking advantage of St. Mary’s offensive ineptitude, the Aggies pushed their lead to as many as 20 points in the second half when Ali Dibba (9 points) sank a free throw to make the score 53-33 with 10:12 remaining.

A&M’s defensive domination showed in everything St. Mary’s did — or, perhaps more accurately, didn’t do.

Even with 7-foot-3 center Andrew McKeever in the middle for St. Mary’s, the Aggies outscored the Gaels in the paint 28-12. 

St. Mary’s shot nearly 49% from the field during the season; the Aggies held them to 38% shooting for the night. The Gaels were so flustered that the team who led the nation in free throw percentage at 80.5% made only 4 of 11 attempts.

St. Mary’s leading scorers, Paulius Murauskas and Mikey Lewis, combined to average 33 points per game in the regular season. Against A&M, they combined for just 9. Murauskas’ biggest contribution to the game was grabbing Rylan Griffen (4 points) from behind in the waning seconds of the game, leading to a brief scuffle and Gaels assistants forcing him to the locker room.

“It was an elite defensive performance from us,” McMillan said. “They made 10 threes, and we still had a double digit win. That means we did a lot of good things. I’m proud of our guys. We didn’t come here just for one game.”

The Aggies did not shoot up to their usual standards against the nation’s seventh-ranked defense, but still shot 44% from the field and made 8 of 23 3-point attempts — including three by Agee. 

A&M will face the winner of the game between second-seeded Houston and 15-seed Idaho for a right to play in the Sweet 16 at Toyota Center in Houston.