No. 18 Aggies to battle Arkansas in SEC Tournament Friday

NASHVILLE, TN - The No. 2-seeded Aggies will face 7 seed Arkansas in the quarterfinals of the 2023 SEC Tournament at 6 p.m. on Friday at Bridgestone Arena.

It is the second time the Aggies have earned a coveted double-bye at the SEC Tournament. The 2015-16 Aggies were the top seed and reached the final of the 2016 SEC Tournament.

At last year’s tournament in Tampa, Fla., the Aggies won three games, including upsets of top-seeded Auburn (67-62) and #4 Arkansas (82-64) to reach the final where they fell to #2 Tennessee (65-50).

MAKING HISTORY:

The Aggies’ 15-3 league record was the team’s best-ever SEC worksheet, supplanting the 13-5 mark by the 2016 SEC regular season championship squad.

It’s first time Texas A&M has posted 15 victories in conference play in exactly 100 years when the 1922-23 Aggie basketball team was coached by National Football Foundation Hall of Famer D.X. Bible and the original 12th Man, E. King Gill, was earning All-Southwest Conference honors on the hardwood just over a year after coming out of the stands in case he was needed in the Aggie football team’s win over over Centre College in the 1922 Dixie Classic in Dallas.

TRENDS & STREAKS:

• Texas A&M leads the nation in FTM and FTA with an average of 19.4-25.4, and its FT% of .762 leads the SEC.
• As of 3/8, Texas A&M is the only team in DI basketball with 600 or more free throws made. The Aggies average 1.7 more FTM/G than any other team in Div. I college basketball.
• Texas A&M is the only SEC team with over 750 FTA, and the Aggies have shot 100+ more free throws than 10 SEC teams and 200+ more than six teams.
• Texas A&M is a SEC-best 22-4 in its last 26 games against SEC opponents (includes SEC tournament).
• The Aggies allowed a SEC-low avg. of 26.7 first-half points in conference play and limited opponents to 30 or fewer in 13-of-18 SEC games, including the past 3.
• Wade Taylor IV and SEC POY Brandon Miller are the SEC’s only players to score 500+ points for the season and 300+ points in SEC play. Taylor IV joins 2012-13 All-SEC first-teamer Elston Turner as lone Aggies to do it since joining the SEC.
• Tyrece Radford had 10+ points in 14-of-18 SEC games.
• After averaging only 2.5 free throw attempts per game for the first three years of his career, Tyrece Radford is making 5.4 trips to the charity stripe per game in 2022-23. Radford’s 80.2 FT% is markedly improved from last year when he hit 67.1% from the line. Radford’s three-year FT% entering 2022-23 was 70.6%.
• Taylor and Radford were the SEC’s highest scoring guard tandem in league play at 30.9 points/G. Against AP Top 25 opponents, the pair combined for a 38.5 scoring average.
• Texas A&M was the only SEC team with two players hitting better than 50.0% from the field (min. 200 FGA): Henry Coleman III (.535) and Julius Marble (.533).
• The Aggies are 11-1 when super sub Andersson Garcia logs 5 or more rebounds and 14-2 when he scores 3 or more points. If “makes winning plays off the bench” was a stat, Garcia would be the SEC leader.
• There are 10 total players in the SEC averaging 13.0+ points and 5.0+ rebounds per game. Texas A&M’s 6-foot-2 Tyrece Radford is the SEC’s only 13.0+/5.0+ player under 6-foot-8.
• Texas A&M’s tandem of Dexter Dennis and Tyrece “Boots” Radford is the ONLY 6-foot-5 or shorter pair nationally with 700-plus career rebounds.

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