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Baseball bubbles are celebrated at Texas A&M.
Basketball bubbles are not.
But in the midst of a February free fall, Texas A&M has landed square on the bubble for NCAA Tournament inclusion.
That precarious bubble could easily burst if the Aggies don’t end a four-game losing streak, which has severely blemished their Tournament resume.
That skid included an 82-69 disaster at Vanderbilt last Saturday, which was arguably the low point of the conference grind.
The Aggies (17-8, 7-5) hope to regain traction on Wednesday night in a 6 p.m. CT Southeastern Conference match with Ole Miss (11-14, 3-9).
The term “must win” is often overused. Technically, A&M’s clash with Ole Miss does not qualify because five more SEC games and the SEC Tournament remain.
“I would never put pressure on our team with that (must-win tag),” A&M coach Bucky McMillan said on Tuesday afternoon. “I think we must play well at this time of year. That’s probably what I would say.
“We didn’t play well in the last game at all on either side of the ball. We were fatigued in that game. We had a good practice today. We looked fresh. We looked good.
“I just think we’ve got to play well (Wednesday). When you come down the home stretch, that’s what it’s going to come down to.”
If the Aggies don’t play well, there is no indication when free fall might end.
Ole Miss (92nd in the NET rankings) is the lowest-rated team remaining on A&M’s SEC schedule. The visiting Rebels are just 2-6 on the road. Overall, they’ve endured seven consecutive losses. The last three have been by double-figure margins.
Ole Miss is the SEC’s lowest-scoring team with a 74.0 average per game. The Rebels are also 16th in field goal percentage (43.6 percent) and 15th in rebounding (34.9).
Guard AJ Storr leads Ole Miss in scoring with a 14.6 average. Forward Malik Dia, a 6-foot-9 senior, averages 13.2 points and a team-high 6.1 rebounds.
A&M forward Rashaun Agee — who leads the Aggies in scoring and rebounding — warned that, despite Ole Miss’ recent struggles, a win cannot be taken for granted.
“That makes them more dangerous,” Agee said. “Everybody in the SEC is an opponent you have to respect and go into the game with a different mindset.
“I tell our team all the time if you don’t come in with that ‘dog’ mindset — if you don’t come in with that ready mindset — then tell coach you don’t need to play.”
Similarly, guard Marcus Hill, who has averaged 15.75 points over the last four games, said the Aggies’ swoon is no cause for panic.
“We’ve had our high, and we’ve had a few games where we struggled, but we find each other,” he said. “I feel like we needed this. I’d rather have it now than later in March or down the road. We’re just figuring it out.”
A&M needs to figure out how to get guard Rubén Dominguez back on track. Mired in a shooting slump, Dominguez’s scoring average has slipped from 13.5 to 11.3 over the last seven games.
In that span, he’s converted just nine of 39 shots from 3-point range for a 23 percent success rate. Prior to the slump, he was hitting 45.5 percent from behind the arc.
“There’s ebbs and flows of a season for a team and for players, particularly shooters,” McMillan said. “He shot it really well today (in practice).”
McMillan has encouraged Dominguez to focus on other parts of his game. But he said the problem isn’t all on Dominguez.
“Some of Rubén’s deal has been that we’re playing a little too slow in some ways on offense and defense, and so (opponents are) able to key on him a lot more when the game is just half-court, bone-on-bone,” McMillan said “We’ve got to get the game where he’s able to get loose a little bit in transition.”
McMillan provided an A&M history lesson to show the Aggies’ problems can be overcome.
He noted in 2016 that the Aggies won their first seven to start SEC play. Then they lost five straight to fall to 7-5.
Finally, they defeated Ole Miss on Feb. 16, eventually won a share of the SEC regular-season championship and did not lose again until the finals of the SEC Tournament.
“It’s funny how that works,” McMillan said. “We’re sitting here on Feb. 18, and we’re going to play Ole Miss after we start 7-and-1 and lost the four games.”
McMillan hopes the Aggies can repeat history. If they can, an infusion of bubbles may appear around A&M.
The celebratory kind, of course.
