COLLEGE STATION, Texas—Last December, Texas A&M coach Mark Turgeon watched Derrick Roland writhing on the court with a broken leg—a gruesome injury that cost the team their top defender and second-leading scorer.
Texas A&M lost two of its first three Big 12 games afterward, but bounced back to win 10 of its last 13 to earn a first-round bye in the Big 12 tournament.
Now these resilient Aggies, who face Nebraska on Thursday, hope to make a splash in the tournament after last year’s first-round exit.
Turgeon said he didn’t expect his team to perform as well as it did after Roland’s injury.
“I just remember sitting with about five minutes to go in the Nebraska game here at home and thinking: ‘Oh boy, I hope we can win this game,'” Turgeon said. “We were still trying to find ourselves. I think it was our third game without D-Ro (Roland) and we couldn’t make a jump shot.”
The Aggies used a 9-0 run in the last few minutes of that game to take the lead and hold on for the 64-53 win.
“After the game my brother texted me and said: ‘Congratulations’ and I said: ‘I just hope I can get to eight (wins),'” Turgeon said. “So every time we won he would say six more, five more, four more, he just kept getting to eight. Then of course we got greedy once we got to eight. We got there pretty quick.”
But first Texas A&M would lose two tough road games, including a 72-67 overtime loss to rival Texas to drop to 1-2, making his goal of eight conference wins even more difficult.
Junior Nathan Walkup said it took the team a while to find a new identity without Roland.
“We all had to redefine our roles and what we were going to do and we all believed that if we each kind of took a little piece of what D-Ro did, we could be that team that could be really good,” he said. “Losing D-Ro made us even closer. His leadership, not even playing, just off the court leadership has brought us closer. We know we can do it. We know we can win and we know we can play well.”
Key in Texas A&M’s recovery from Roland’s loss was the play of fellow seniors Donald Sloan and Bryan Davis. Sloan averaged 18.3 points a game in Big 12 play and Davis added 11 points and 8.4 rebounds a game.
Roland, who had the home crowd chanting his name at A&M’s last home game, wasn’t worried about how the team would fare without him and assumed Sloan and Davis would pick up the slack.
“It’s kind of what I expected,” he said. “When I went down I knew that those two would be the main two to step up. We’ve been here for four years and we’ve been through so much together. If I had to pick any two people on this team to step up I knew it would be them.”
Davis is proud that he and Sloan were able to keep the things together during the tough times this season.
“We’re a team that never gives up,” Davis said. “Things don’t go our way a lot, but we always tend to stick with it and tough it out. A lot of times at the end we end up on top of the situation.”
Turgeon gushed about the work of Sloan and Davis.
“Those two have had unbelievable years,” Turgeon said. “You don’t win 11 games unless you have good players. That’s the bottom line.”
Now he’s hoping the pair can lead his team to success in the Big 12 tournament to help improve their position entering the NCAA tournament.
“I think anything you can do this time of year helps your program,” Turgeon said. “I think we can help our seeding a little bit this weekend. If you do something great and win the thing it’s going to really help our seeding, especially the way we finished the year winning eight out of ten. I think we can help ourselves out a lot.”
Junior guard B.J. Holmes said the Aggies believe they can win the Big 12 tournament.
“We’ve got a confident team,” Holmes said. “Our season has been going really good. I don’t think the team is too high on itself. We’re still hungry.”
