Buzz Williams shares key to dominant second half

Texas A&M bounced back from their upset loss to Boise State with a dominant win over Oregon State, defeating the Beavers 72-54 at home on Sunday. The Aggies’ night was highlighted by an impressive second-half performance, and head coach Buzz Williams shared what the key was to their strong finish.

“I think one of the things that I think was a huge difference is we had nine turnovers in the first half and only three in the second half, five of those nine were live ball,” Williams said.

The Aggies did take better care of the basketball, but that wasn’t the only area they improved upon in the second half of Saturday’s game. Texas A&M actually entered halftime down four points to the Beavers, but looked like a completely different team in the second half.

Texas A&M did it on both sides of the ball in the last 20 minutes of the game, outscoring Oregon State 46-24 in the second half. The Aggies shot the lights out in the second half, shooting 50% from the field and 42.9% from the three-point line, while also playing stifling defense on the other end of the court, holding Oregon State to just 29.6% from the field and only eight field goals made.

The Aggies also cleaned the glass in the second half, out-rebounding the Beavers 21-13, seeing production from their front and back court by forward Julius Marble and guard Tyrece Radford who finished the game with seven rebounds each.

“So we were doing some good things in the first half on the glass, I thought we were even better in the second half on the glass. Williams said. “But I think the major statistical difference would be that we played without turning it over.”

Texas A&M got a collective scoring effort from their team Saturday with four players scoring in double figures, led by a season-high 16 points from senior guard and Wichita State transfer Dexter Dennis.

The Aggies will face Memphis in their next game on the road this Saturday in a 7:00 p.m. ET tip-off that will air on ESPNU. Dennis actually faced Memphis last year as a member of the Shockers and had 16 points in that game, suffering a big 81-57 loss. Hopefully Dennis can get redemption on the Tigers this time around, and the Aggies can secure their seventh win of the season.