Frigid conditions wreaked havoc with Texas A&M on Tuesday night.
The Aggies struggled with icy, cold weather getting to Bud Walton Arena and icy, cold shooting once inside.
As a result, Texas A&M (15-7, 7-2) never led in an 81-70 Southeastern Conference basketball loss to Arkansas (15-7, 4-5) on Tuesday night.
Henry Coleman III had a double-double with 18 points and 15 rebounds. Wade Taylor IV had 18 points, and Tyrece Radford had 17. But they combined to convert just 34.5 percent (19-of-55) of their shots.
That was an issue for the entire A&M lineup. They converted just 34.2 percent of their field goal attempts and missed 10 free throws. They made just 15-of-39 layups or shots at point-blank range.
“We shot 50 percent of our balls at the rim,” A&M coach Buzz Williams said. “We just did not finish at a high rate. We shot 34 percent for the game, 37 percent at the rim. Fifty percent of our balls we shot in the charge circle. We just didn’t finish.”
A big factor in A&M’s failure to finish at the rim was the obstruction of 6-foot-9 and 6-foot-10 twin brothers Makhi and Makhel Mitchell, who combined for 10-of-13 blocked shots accumulated by the Razorbacks.
Despite that, A&M trailed just 68-64 after a Dexter Dennis dunk closed out an 11-2 run with four minutes and 10 seconds remaining.
But the Aggies' shooting problems immediately resurfaced. They converted just one of their next 12 shots, which enabled the Razorbacks to pull away for their ninth win in 10 games over A&M at Bud Walton Arena.
“We hung in there,” Williams said. “The 11-2 run, we kind of changed as a secondary defense. Had a lot of success with it. The problem is when they scored out of that, they were scoring the same way they were scoring in our man. We weren’t finishing the possession with a defensive rebound and/or we fouled too much.”
Arkansas grabbed 13 offensive rebounds, which led to 13 second-chance points.
But A&M compensated for its inaccuracy by getting 24 offensive boards and 19 second-chance points. The Aggies also forced 17 turnovers, which were parlayed into 16 points.
A&M committed just eight turnovers.
“We played with a low turnover rate,” Williams said. “We created a high turnover rate. We just didn’t control the glass. That is one of the major ingredients of what we have to do.”
This road trip was hazardous well before the Aggies reached Fayetteville.
An ice storm on Monday night forced A&M's flight to Fayetteville to be diverted to Wichita, Kansas. The Aggies then bussed to Tulsa, where they arrived after midnight.
After spending the night in Tulsa, they arrived by bus in Fayetteville just before noon.
While A&M came out cold, Arkansas was hot. The Razorbacks, led by guards Ricky Council and Davonte Davis with 19 points each, shot 57.7 percent in the first half to take a 42-34 lead at the break.
The Razorbacks' lead swelled to 13 points, 66-53, on a Davis 3-pointer from the corner with 7:52 to play.
The Aggies then responded with their 11-2 run, which featured three-point plays by Taylor and Coleman.
But then they missed seven consecutive shots before Taylor hit a 3-pointer with 1:27 to go.
By then, the Aggies had fallen behind 72-67 and could not recover.
