Texas A&M Drops Exhibition Game Against SMU

Not officially official, but Texas A&M took on an SMU basketball team that treated the matchup like a real game.

In this exhibition game at the Moody Coliseum, PJ Haggerty led the scoring, finishing with 28 points in his debut in the Maroon and White.

Haggerty’s offensive shooting wasn't enough for the team to win, as his teammates Jordan Pope and Mackenzie Mgbako combined for 27 points in the 94-88 loss on Sunday afternoon.

This was head coach Bucky McMillan’s second season leading the program, and after the game he took time to answer questions about what he saw; he said he was glad it wasn’t a regular-season game because it wasn’t the best performance from his group.

“Offensively, the first half was atrocious,” McMillan said. “I had never seen our team ever play like that, even in practice. We weren’t sharing the ball. We’re playing one-on-one. In the second half, we actually played good defense."

Analyzing Numbers

Fouls were a big issue in this non-conference clash: the Aggies committed 34, and the Mustangs committed only 24. That was one reason the Mustangs got the six-point win at home before next week's season opener.

A&M had a sluggish start despite scoring 37 points at halftime and holding SMU to 35. Turnovers were key, as the stellar defense forced 20 turnovers from SMU.

The Aggies recorded 16 steals, with Cade Phillips and PJ Haggerty leading with four each. Haggerty also led the team at the free-throw line, along with forward Zach Clemence, who made 15 of 40 attempts at the charity stripe.

From the three-point line, the A&M offense did not have its best outing, taking 26 shots and making only six. Three of the six three-pointers were by Texas transfer Jordan Pope, who went 3-for-5 from downtown and had a late 3-pointer to get it to within five points, but SMU’s offense was able to draw the whistle and get to the free-throw line, where nine straight free throws basically sealed the game up with 26 seconds.

At the end of the contest, the Maroon and White shot 34.7 percent from the field and were only 23.1 percent from three. From the line, they shot 80 percent, but avoiding fouls was clearly a challenge, as McMillan noted.

“We’ve been on our guys about fouling, fouling, fouling, in practice,” McMillan noted. “They don’t believe it until it happens, and so I’d much rather it happen in a scrimmage than in a real game, and then all of a sudden they believe you. So this was really good for our guys to see: ‘Hey, you cannot foul like that.”

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