Aggie Basketball Season Recap

I just don’t feel like doing a big recap for basketball since the season finished in an incomplete fashion.  What a mess my game recaps were this season.  I put them all over the place.  This abbreviated summary turned out to be more trouble than anything.  I’m not exactly in the mood to reminisce anyway.  If baseball and softball are really over, I’m not even going to bother recapping them.  (On the plus side, I’ve still got a bunch of other stuff that I’ve been meaning to work on and post and now I have the time.  Yay?) 

The Men had a tremendous season given their injury difficulties.  They’d lost their point guards, Clayton Henry and AJ Harris, early.  Terrell Brown was also hurt for several games.  The team underachieved and lost the Cayman Islands Classic and had their streaks broken against the Lobos and the Miners.  Briefly, the team was at full strength and did well in beating Mississippi State (12-22-19).   

Unfortunately, AJ and Clayton would be done for the season shortly into the conference schedule with additional injuries.  UTEP transfer, Evan Gilyard, had come into his own by that time to fill the position.  Trevelin Queen had surgery later, but was able to come back with a vengeance.  There were some close calls, but the Aggies went undefeated in the WAC and finished with the nation’s longest winning streak.  Johnny McCants, Ivan Aurrecoechea, and Jabari Rice had great seasons.  (Jabari had the shot of the year against Utah State, 2-15-20, to win that game at the last second.)  Much like last season, the team had multiple players step up in different games making them very hard to defend against. 

It was a great season, but an incomplete one.  The rest of the WAC was mostly having a down year.  The Aggies likely would have won the tournament.  Coach Jans had to be pleased with their resilience, but could only wonder how it would have gone in the NCAA Tournament.  For that matter, how good would this team have been without so many injuries?  Their bugaboo at the big dance has been poor seeding.  A couple more early wins would have helped there.  On a personal note, I was able to go to two games this season (1-11-20 vs UMKC and 2-1-20 vs GCU) and enjoyed them.  Seeing that full house for the GCU game was awesome. 

The Women’s season was a near complete disaster.  They were the preseason WAC champion favorites, but struggled all season.  I believe the loss Kalei Atkinson before play began blew a hole in their lineup that they never recovered from.  I think she was poised to be one of the team’s best defenders and would have come on well offensively.  The team might have also leaned way too hard on their star player, Gia Pack.  She was the team’s best shooter and best rebounder.  The rest of the team often seemed to get caught standing around watching her play.  

Aaliyah Prince should have been a good compliment for Gia, but seemed to disappear for entire quarters and even games.  (I wonder if she was hurt at times.)  Many of the new and returning players didn’t pan out.  Just to make it worse, Gia missed the last seven games of the regular season.  That should have finished the team off, but instead, it made them stronger by the end.  Aaliyah came on.  Adrianna Henderson, Tayelin Grays, Adenike Aderinto, and Dee Dee Echols had some great games.  Freshman Soufia Inoussa busted out.  Freshman Shania Harper also played a lot of minutes.  She’s a bit rough, but is built for future success.  I hate to say it, but the team might have been much better if Gia had missed seven games earlier in the season. 

We’ll never know if this team could have won the WAC Tournament.  They’d lost to their next opponent, #1 seed UMKC, twice in close games this season, but the Roos would have been facing a better team this time.  I’m sure Gia was looking forward to squaring off against Ericka Mattingly, who was the WAC Player of the Year, an award Gia probably would have won if she’d been able to play out the season. 

Just personally again, I only went to seven games, not even half their home games, and the Aggies only won two of them.  I had some highlights (?): 11-13-19 vs UTEP (I got to see Katarina Zec and Brooke Salas), 11-17-19 vs Lobos, 12-18-19 vs ASU (with 1600 kids in attendance), and my in-person season finished with a great overtime win versus the Roadrunners 2-29-20 (saw Aileen Galicia there, it was bittersweet).