Report: Texas A&M and Houston schedule basketball game for 2023-24 season

Two of Texas’ top college hoops programs are set to meet in the Toyota Center this coming December as part of the 2023-24 season. According to college basketball insider Jon Rothstein, Houston and Texas A&M are reaching an agreement to play each other at the home of the Houston Rockets on December 16.

Below is Rothstein’s full report on the Houston game, which he posted to Twitter on Thursday morning. Shortly after that, Rothstein also shared the Aggies will host Memphis on December 10 as a return game of a home-and-home series.

“NEWS: Houston and Texas A&M are finalizing an agreement to play on December 16th at the Toyota Center in Houston, according to multiple sources.”

That’s a heck of a non-conference game for both clubs. Houston obviously was tremendous this past season and has become one of the stronger programs in the country under Kelvin Sampson. Meanwhile, the Aggies are no schlubs under Buzz Williams and have improved each year under his reign, culminating in a second place finish in the SEC in 2022-23 and their first NCAA Tournament appearance with Williams.

This one will most definitely have Selection Sunday stakes, even though it’s just one non-conference game. A chance for one program to take home a signature out-of-conference and away-from-home victory.

This is a particularly important piece of news for A&M. Of course, Aggie fans remember that they were spurned by the NCAA Selection Committee in 2022 despite their scorching end to the regular season. The primary reasons being…they lost eight games in a row at the start SEC play, and more importantly, they had just one Quad 2 or better win in all of non-conference play.

The committee is rarely consistent year to year, however, they’ve consistently valued out-of-conference wins and especially ones that come away from home. Even this past year, A&M tripped over the first hurdle to start the race, so to speak, by losing a couple Quad 3/4 games while only winning one game against a Quad 3 or better team in all of non-conference play. As a result, the committee slated them as a No. 7 seed when they easily put together a resume deserving of a top-four seed the rest of the way.

You can’t control your conference schedule, but you can control your non-conference schedule. The Selection Committee understands this and values when teams schedule aggressively out of their league, especially away from home. The Aggies did that here and could land a crown jewel type of victory before the turn of the year if they’re able to conquer the Cougars.