Missouri’s Aidan Shaw (23) and Nick Honor defend against Texas A&M’s Wade Taylor IV during Wednesday’s NCAA men’s basketball game at Mizzou Arena. (Photo: Thomas Grove)

NCAA Men’s Basketball	1	2	Final
Texas A&M (14-8, 5-4)	38	41	79
Missouri (8-15, 0-10)	25	35	60

Terrance Williams
Staff Writer

COLUMBIA, MO — With 7 minutes and 54 seconds to go in the first half on Wednesday night’s SEC men’s basketball game at Mizzou Arena, one of the most exciting moments of the entire season occurred for University of Missouri hoops fans. Reserve center Mabor Majak threw down a thunderous putback dunk to not only score his first basket of the season, it also gave Missouri at 23-22 lead.

Unfortunately, what followed was some of the worst offense the Tigers had played all season. Missouri scored only three more points the rest of the half and didn’t score its next basket until 90 seconds into the second half.

The Tigers went more than nine minutes without making a basket. That’s nearly half a half.

And because of that drought, and another one later in the game, Missouri suffered its 10 consecutive loss — and 13th loss in its last 14 games — in a 79-60 defeat to Texas A&M.

“I thought our guys did a great job, especially in that first half,” Mizzou head coach Dennis Gates said. “Ultimately when you look at the game,
you have to look at those runs or eliminate the opportunities where we weren’t able to manufacture points.

“Sometimes in games, when field goals aren’t going in, you have to manufacture points on the free throw line. We weren’t able to do that in an effective way and we only shot five free throws in that first half and ultimately, during the game, especially in the second half when we cut the lead to four, they had eight free throw makes (in a row) to our zero. We can’t play the game that way, it’s impossible. It puts too much pressure on your half-court offense if you can’t manufacture points at the free-throw line. I thought when we did get those foul calls, I thought our guys were very aggressive in certain situations.”

During that first half scoring drought, A&M scored 16 straight points to take the lead. The Aggies led 38-25 at halftime and never trailed again.

Mizzou played better in the second half, and managed to trim A&M’s lead to three points, following a sprawling jumper by Tamar Bates and a deep three-pointer by Nick Honor that made the score 46-43 with just under 13 minutes to go.

But then the Tigers went cold again and allowed a 10-2 run by A&M that pushed the Aggies lead back to 56-45 with 10 minutes to go. Then, after a timeout, Mizzou allowed another 10-2 Aggies run to fall behind 66-47. At that point, some fans began to leave the arena.

“Credit Texas A&M you know, tough team, tough team to play,” Gates said. “(They are) especially tough when they manufacture points off second-chance buckets in the paint… The other thing is being able to manufacture points off of our turnovers. We had 12 turnovers, they had 24 points, that’s two points per turnover average that they were able to yield and you can’t put that much pressure because it’s live ball turnovers and points in transition that kind of help them.”

Missouri was without grad student point guard and leading scorer Sean East, who had to sit out due to knee soreness. Honor led Mizzou in scoring, with a season-high 19 points on eight-of-16 shooting. Bates added 18 points, while Noah Carter contributed 11 points.

The Tigers are now 8-15 this season and 0-10 in SEC play. They’ll be at home again on Saturday, when they take on Mississippi State.

Texas A&M 79

##	Player	GS	MIN	FG	3PT	FT	ORB-DRB	REB	PF	A	TO	BLK	STL	PTS
23	Radford,Tyrece	*	33	8-15	1-2	5-6	2-2	4	1	0	0	0	0	22
04	Taylor IV,Wade	*	33	7-16	1-5	3-3	0-5	5	3	3	1	0	4	18
00	Carter,Jace	*	31	3-6	2-4	4-5	1-4	5	5	2	0	0	2	12
13	Washington,Solomon	*	18	2-5	0-1	0-0	0-1	1	4	0	1	0	0	4
10	Leveque,Wildens	*	7	1-1	0-0	0-0	0-1	1	1	0	0	1	0	2
15	Coleman III,Henry		20	4-6	0-0	0-1	2-3	5	0	1	1	0	1	8
11	Garcia,Andersson		33	2-3	0-0	3-4	8-8	16	2	5	3	2	1	7
02	Hefner,Hayden		16	2-5	0-3	0-0	1-0	1	0	0	1	0	0	4
05	Lawrence,Eli		2	1-2	0-1	0-0	0-0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2
35	Obaseki,Manny		5	0-3	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
24	Lee,Jaelyn		2	0-1	0-1	0-0	0-0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
TM	TEAM		0	0-0	0-0	0-0	2-0	2	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Totals	–	200	30-63	4-17	15-19	16-24	40	16	11	7	3	8	79

Missouri 60

##	Player	GS	MIN	FG	3PT	FT	ORB-DRB	REB	PF	A	TO	BLK	STL	PTS
02	Bates, Tamar	*	39	7-15	2-5	4-4	1-2	3	0	3	3	0	0	20
10	Honor, Nick	*	39	8-16	3-8	0-0	0-1	1	2	2	4	1	1	19
35	Carter, Noah	*	33	4-6	1-3	2-3	0-4	4	4	2	2	2	0	11
04	Lewis, Curt	*	27	2-4	1-1	0-1	0-0	0	1	2	1	0	1	5
00	Butler, Jordan	*	17	0-3	0-1	0-0	1-1	2	4	1	1	3	0	0
45	Majak, Mabor		13	1-1	0-0	1-1	1-1	2	4	0	1	0	0	3
14	Robinson II, Anthony		10	0-3	0-2	2-2	0-0	0	1	0	0	0	1	2
23	Shaw, Aidan		19	0-0	0-0	0-2	1-6	7	2	1	0	0	2	0
75	Vanover, Connor		3	0-0	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
TM	TEAM		0	0-0	0-0	0-0	1-2	3	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Totals	–	200	22-48	7-20	9-13	5-17	22	18	11	12	6	5	60

2023-24 Mizzou Tigers Men’s Basketball Schedule

Date	Time	At	Opponent	Location	TV
February 10, 2024 (Saturday)	7:30 p.m.	Home	Mississippi State	Mizzou Arena
February 17, 2024 (Saturday)	7:30 p.m.	Away	Ole Miss	Oxford, Miss.
February 20, 2024 (Tuesday)	6 p.m.	Home	#5 Tennessee	Mizzou Arena
February 24, 2024 (Saturday)	11 a.m.	Away	Arkansas	Fayetteville, Ark.	ESPN or ESPN2
February 28, 2024 (Wednesday)	5:30 p.m. CT	Away	Florida	Gainesville, Fla.
March 2, 2024 (Saturday)	7:30 p.m.	Home	Ole Miss	Mizzou Arena
March 5, 2024 (Tuesday)	8 p.m.	Home	#12 Auburn	Mizzou Arena
March 9, 2024 (Saturday)	7:30 p.m.	Away	LSU	Baton Rouge, La.
March 13-17, 2024 (Wednesday)	TBA	Bridgestone Arena	SEC Tournament	Nashville, Tenn.