Texas A&M entered tonight’s game as 14 point favorites, but the product on the court told a much different story.
We got it done, but this was an ugly win.
Robert Williams was great down the stretch
The projected lottery pick dropped 18 points and 16 boards tonight, but he was especially effective after Mizzou tied the proceedings at 65-65 with 5:34 remaining.
In those tense final few minutes, Williams tallied a dunk, a steal, an assist, a second dunk (and a spectacular solo effort at that), and two critical rebounds.
Trocha carried us in the first half
With JC Hampton’s cold shooting night, we needed pop from elsewhere in the lineup... and Trocha delivered. He toned down the three point attempts (likely at the staff’s request), and the result was a much more versatile offensive performance. Foul trouble kept him from making a larger impact, but he provided the juice during large stretches of squad-wide ineptitude in the first half.
As the schedule gets tougher over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to need 25-30 points from the Trocha/Hogg/Hampton group to be competitive. It doesn’t have to be the same guy every night, but someone needs to come out firing. Tonight, it was Trocha.
That LSU/Mizzou week was fun, right?
This Saturday we travel to 17th ranked (and white-hot) Florida, and that game is followed by four opponents with an RPI ranking between 45 and 60 (ours is 80, for what it’s worth).
- @ Florida (8 RPI, 17th AP)
- @ Vanderbilt (48)
- Auburn (60)
- @Arkansas (46)
- Alabama (55)
The message, quite simply, is that the easy part of the schedule has come and gone. Moving forward, we’ll need to be much better than we were tonight, or we could be looking at a rough couple of weeks.
BTHO Florida