Texas A&M stumbles at Reed Arena as Rice remains undefeated, 66-58

A subpar fourth quarter halted Texas A&M from finishing a close one at Reed Arena as the Aggies dropped their second non-conference game of the season on Sunday to Rice, 66-58.

The back-and-forth battle started early and remained throughout the first two quarters. A&M utilized the paint to post 18 of their 25 first-half points, eight of which came from Jada Malone. True freshman Janiah Barker also began to find her groove early as the Owls struggled to defend her.

Yet, Barker’s 19 career-high points weren’t enough to shoo away the Owls.

Tied 25-25 at the half, A&M came out with an explosive 10-2 run to begin the third quarter, but Rice played catchup and ultimately outscored the Aggies in the third. The Maroon & White failed to pull out all the stops on defense and allowed two Rice players to finish in double digits.

“We can’t guard the basketball right now. We just get driven. Then it forces help rotations, and they have great shooters on the perimeter,” A&M head coach Joni Taylor said. “We know it's an issue for us, and it got exposed tonight. Now it’s on film. We’ve got to be better at guarding the basketball.”

With the Owls leading 45-44 going into the final stanza, the Aggies had an opportunity to reel it in but shot at a 33 percent clip in the fourth. The lead slowly slipped away from the Aggies as Rice was able to nail two 3-pointers in the quarter. After eight lead changes, Rice quieted the Aggies’ resilient efforts as A&M ultimately fell to 4-2 to start the season.

“I thought we executed well for most of the game, and then in the fourth quarter, we didn’t execute some of the things we were running on offense,” Taylor said. “Defensively, we had a lot of lapses as well.”

Despite the loss, Taylor said these close non-conference games are the best kind of games to learn from.

“We told them before the game started that Rice is really good. Whatever happens after this game, we are going to learn from it. We will learn a lot about ourselves and what worked,” Taylor said. “This is good for us. There’s going to be a lot of things we can take from a film standpoint.”

The Aggies look to bounce back from this loss as they head on the road to face undefeated Kansas in Lawrence this week. The non-conference tilt is set for Wednesday night at 7 p.m. CT.