No. 23 Texas A&M overcomes 16-point deficit to defeat Southern, 71-54
Burn half of the tape. Keep the rest.
With a split-personality victory, No. 23 Texas A&M (4-1) kept its season from trending south against Southern (1-4) on Wednesday night, 71-54.
In stretching an early-season win streak to four, the Aggies erased a precarious 39-25 halftime deficit.
"I probably said about what you think I said," head coach Buzz Williams said of his intermission messaging. "To our guy's credit, they were all shaking their heads. They understood.
"There is for sure a lesson to be learned, and hopefully, we process this lesson and don't have to do it again because those 20 minutes were not good in any stretch."
For 20 minutes, A&M was as bad as could be, and a SWAC affiliate had 7,061 at Reed Arena fearing another Wofford catastrophe.
But over the final 21 and change, the Aggies went from trailing by 16 to winning by 17.
They went from being on upset alert to making it hurt.
"It was all the things that immature teams do," Williams said of his team's first-half slump. "Not playing hard. Not playing together. Not playing connected. All of the things that we have not experienced this year, nor did we experience in the second half, and I was not expecting it."
A&M opened the second on a decisive 28-5 run — including a 19-0 streak — to avoid the Jaguar jaws of defeat.
In the final stanza, the Aggies outscored Southern 46-15.
Reed finally showed life on Wade Tayor IV's 3-pointer with 14:15 remaining as A&M whittled the deficit down to 44-37.
Taylor finished with 17. Zhuric Phelps contributed 16, and Henry Coleman III had 11.
"There wasn't too much talking," Coleman said of halftime. "Not a lot was said, but we knew we had to come out in the second half and play Texas A&M basketball. That's what we did."
Less than two minutes later, Taylor hit another triple to bring the Ags within a single possession.
Jace Carter's layup with 11:12 gave A&M its first lead since the early stages of the night.
Solomon Washington's block of a Jordan Johnson drive at the other end preserved an advantage A&M clung to for the rest of the night.
"We knew what was at stake," Carter said. "With a mature group and an older group like we have, we've been in situations like this. You've got to be a grown man and go about it the right way."
Sporting a right black eye, he finished with just five points but nine rebounds.
A&M's scoring run reached 14-0 on Manny Obaseki's conventional 3-point play and peaked on his layup with less than eight to play.
Southern's drought lasted over nine minutes as the Maroon & White built a 53-47 lead.
Such dramatics were required to escape a hole that was largely dug by the Aggies themselves.
"Everybody has been through adversity of some sort," the always-thoughtful Coleman said. "That little bit of adversity that we faced, we've faced bigger. We knew we were going to have to win that game no matter what.
"We just had to come out and play Texas A&M basketball: Rebound the ball well, defend at a high level and get on the floor. That's what we did in the second half."
A&M shot a horrific 22.9 percent (8-of-35) from the field in the opening 20 minutes. That flipped to 52.9 percent in the second and 37.7 percent on the night.
What remained consistent was the Aggies' dominance on the glass as they outrebounded Southern 55-31 overall and 29-10 on the offensive end.
Also ever-present on Wednesday was A&M's ongoing free-throw woes. The Ags converted just 14 of their 26 foul shots (53.8%).
Indeed, an issue that sank them on opening night threatened to bury them before December.
"We're still going to take it one day at a time," Coleman said. "We're going to keep working. We're really not focused on what's going to happen Tuesday. We have to be right where our feet are."
With ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten foes lining up after the Players Era Festival, power competition resumes next week in Las Vegas.
Another Jekyll-and-Hyde performance cannot.