Former guard Logan Lee recaps A&M's narrow victory at Ole Miss

Former Aggie guard Logan Lee joined us on Thursday's edition of TexAgs Live to recap the No. 13 Ags' 63-62 win over No. 16 Ole Miss. Lee discussed the highs and lows before highlighting Buzz Williams & Co.'s upcoming matchup against the Longhorns at the Moody Center.

Key notes from Logan Lee interview

• Had Ole Miss made a couple of layups and not turned the ball over on some stupid passes, A&M wouldn't have been in that position. It's better to be lucky than to be good sometimes. However, I think A&M's effort, intensity, hustle and desire to win brought about that luck.
   
• That model is not sustainable. I have not looked at a stat sheet or anything. This is one of the few games that I got up this morning and was like, "What did I miss? What happened here?".
   
• I guarantee you that Buzz Williams and his staff are going to point out every single possession where they had 0-1 passes. There were way too many. They will look at this film. It's one of the few games where I agree with almost everything the announcer said: There were too many zero-pass possessions and too many wild shots.
   
• A 3-point is thrown up at the end of the shot clock, and Solomon Washington got a rebound on the offside. He was falling, passed it to Zhuric Phelps, and Phelps took it down on a 1-4. He took an off-balance, one-legged, falling shot to the baseline. It was from 15 feet. It wasn't like he was four feet away. He went for a layup, got bumped and had to adjust. These types of shot attempts cannot happen. Buzz Williams says it: We get the ball in the rim, but you'd have to get the ball in the rim when it's 1-4, and there is nobody around. In anybody's mind, that was a horrible shot attempt. They will use that film to say, "What are we doing?"
   
• I'm okay with all of Wade Taylor IV’s shots if they've reversed the ball. If he's four feet behind the line, but he's reversed the ball three times, I'm okay. It's not at the beginning of the shot. The first four possessions of the second half were a combined two passes, if you don't include the rebound to pick it up.
   
• In the half-court set, the first possessions were two passes. Wade took three shots. Phelps took one shot, and there was a turnover. You can't start the half that way. But again, their effort, their hustle, their intensity and their desire to win put them in a spot to get a lucky balance. They had a couple of lucky breaks to make baskets at the end. This was a physical game. We talked about LSU and previous teams and how officials don't let them play the game. They call every foul. The officials did the exact opposite in this game. Ole Miss, with four minutes left in the game, took their first three-throw attempt. They let them play, which is good for A&M because they are physical.
   
• I can't believe A&M had 20 turnovers. I can’t believe they shot the way that they shot from the field between Phelps and Taylor and won the game on the road against a top-20 team. To me, as much of a headache as this game was, it shows how good this team is that they can win games like that.
   
• The fact that they can continue to play and continue to go all out effort, even when they are not playing well and are down by eight with four minutes to go, shows that Buzz has created something within this group. It's hard to do that, especially with 18-24 year olds. It's hard to keep pushing. It doesn't matter that we aren't paying well. It doesn't matter that we are losing. Doesn't matter that we are on the road. They keep pushing. It wears people down. That's what happened against Ole Miss. It wore them down. In the first half, when they started making shots and hitting 3-pointers, they upped the tempo a little. They pulled away. They got a lead, and it looked like A&M was in trouble. However, A&M stayed the course, and at the end of the game, after 34 minutes of being pressured and having to struggle for rebounds and every shot attempt, they finally wore Ole Miss down.
   
• Every team has a breaking point. That breaking point maybe 15 minutes into the game if A&M's playing a Southland Conference school. Against SEC teams, especially the ten ranked in the top 25, that breaking point is going to be somewhere between 35 and 38 minutes. If A&M can continue to push and outlast them, they will win the game.
   
• When is Manny Obaseki going to show up? When he does show up, it's a different team. It adds another scoring avenue and another defensive presence. His athleticism is top-notch in comparison to the country, not just this little sector. Manny is an athlete that you can compare to anybody in college basketball. The catch and shoot at the end, the crossover to a mid-range jumper in the paint, those weren't no-pass Manny options. They were off the reverses. Off of kick outs from Pharrel Payne, when he slows it down, he's tremendously better. He takes it to another level. We hope that we see this Manny for the rest of the year. It takes the pressure off of Wade, Phelps and everybody.
   
• When was the last time A&M had a post where they posted up on the block where you had to give it to them? You have to improve your angle, take two dribbles to improve your angle to get it to the post. Payne has a good handle on the ball. He is not afraid to catch it a little further face-up or back it down and make a move. There are pros and cons to having that ball-handling ability. Sometimes, you give it up a little easier, thinking you can get to the block because they can dribble. Give it to him at 17 feet, and he will make something happen.
   
• Thinking about the process of an A&M post player posting up, you have to look at where they are on the floor 99 percent of the time. They are setting screens at the top of the key. The free-throw line extended on the wing. They are out there already. It's not like they are plotters in the post, and they stay there and live there; they are out there a lot.
   
• Against LSU, I realized that all teams jack up 3-pointers at any point in the shot clock. I don't like that. I then realized that I'm old and may not have adjusted to the Steph Curry version of basketball. When people try to emulate that, and they aren't as good, it looks bad, and it's bad basketball.
   
• I was worried that Ole Miss might hit a prayer, but A&M's defense was stellar. If you look at the shot that they took, they had a chance at an offensive rebound. Andersson Garcia and Solo are scrapping it up, tipping the ball. The ball goes on the floor, and Solo dives on it. No one can get it away from him. That's A&M basketball. That's why they win the game. Yes, they got lucky, but their luck was brought upon by the fact that they played so hard. They do what is asked of them by Buzz and the staff. They create their own luck.
   
• I think they can outlast Texas, and that'll be a win for them.