No. 12 Texas A&M (6-1) beat Iowa State (5-1) for the third-place finish at the ESPN Events Invitational on Sunday.
Missing Tyrece Radford and Henry Coleman, the Aggies had an arduous task and needed a lot of help from the bench. It was a very rocky journey after Jace Carter tied the game 2-2 early as Iowa State would go on a 24-10 run before the Aggies would score again. After falling down big to Iowa State, the Aggies would soon go on an 11-0 run to pull within 10 to close out the 1st half down 35-25.
11-0 run to close the half. pic.twitter.com/ApjZTeVXhl
— Texas A&M Basketball (@aggiembk) November 27, 2023
Texas A&M clawed their way back into the game to get the deficit down to four with 15 minutes left. Then back-to-back Wade Taylor scored, finally tying the game up a minute later. The Aggie got their first lead in the second half when Anderson Garcia scored on a putback off an offensive rebound to go up 45-43.
After taking the lead, they held Iowa State at bay, never allowing them to get back ahead the rest of the game. Whenever it looked like the Cyclones could retake the lead, the Aggies answered for a final score of 73-69 for an Aggie 3rd place finish in the tournament.
Below are the Aggie critical contributors from the game:
Wade Taylor IV: 14 points / 4 assists / 2 rebounds
Solomon Washington: 18 points / 6 rebounds
Andersson Garcia: 9 points / 6 rebound
Texas A&M will be back in action at 6:15 p.m. C.T. on Wednesday when they travel to Charlottesville, Va, to take on No. 24 Virginia on Nov 29th.
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