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Texas A&M’s men’s basketball team managed to surprise plenty of people who weren’t too high on the Aggies heading into a season where the team has all but certainly punched its ticket to March Madness. However, it failed to stick the landing while calling attention to that fact after capping off the regular season.
Every college basketball program has a different definition of “success,” but earning a spot in the NCAA Tournament tends to be a sign that you’re doing something right when you consider less than 20% of the teams in the country end up getting the chance to play for a national championship.
Texas A&M headed into the current season hoping to get a taste of March Madness for the fourth year in a row, but it seemed like it was facing an uphill battle in its quest to do so.
Chris McDermott was the only returning player on this year’s roster, which was comprised almost entirely of the transfers who were recruited by Bucky McMillan, the first-year head coach who was hired to fill the void that formed after Buzz Williams defected to Maryland.
The Aggies were predicted to finish in 13th place in the SEC (a conference that boasts 16 teams) in a preseason media poll. They firmly managed to surpass those expectations, but the team was still subjected to a fair amount of mockery for hyping up that fact after the regular season came to an end.
Texas A&M got roasted for bragging about tying for fourth place in the SEC
On Saturday, Texas A&M wrapped up the regular season against LSU in Baton Rouge and got a 94-91 win in a game that was decided in triple overtime.
The Aggies finished the campaign sitting at 21-10 while joining Tennessee and Vanderbilt as one of three SEC teams that went 11-7 in conference play. In doing so, they defied the haters who projected they’d end up finishing significantly lower in the aforementioned poll that was referenced in a graphic the team posted on Sunday.
Don’t doubt the Ags. pic.twitter.com/NPwuk2urEY
— Texas A&M Basketball (@aggiembk) March 8, 2026
The fact that Texas A&M felt the need to brag about a fourth-place finish predictably generated plenty of mockery, and the claim also deserves a bit of an asterisk. They may have had the same record as the Volunteers and the Commodores, but they ended up with the sixth seed in the SEC Tournament thanks to the tiebreakers they were on the wrong end of.
The Aggies will face off against either South Carolina or Oklahoma in that conference gauntlet on Thursday. They could earn an automatic bid to March Madness if they win four games in a row, but they are one of 11 SEC teams that the nation’s top bracketologists believe have already secured an invitation regardless of how things play out.