00:00Texas A&M taking on St. Mary's.
00:02This is a 10-7 matchup on Thursday.
00:05St. Mary's, two-and-a-half point favorites, as I see here.
00:08Total of 146-and-a-half.
00:11St. Mary's, no stranger to the NCAA tournament,
00:13usually having to go through Gonzaga to get through here at some point.
00:18A&M playing in that tough conference in the SEC tournament,
00:21very much battle-tested, and I'm guessing a better strength of schedule
00:24than St. Mary's during the regular season.
00:26You have an opinion on this one?
00:28Yeah, I'll tell you, Texas A&M has a first-year head coach,
00:31and Bucky McMillan comes to College Station from Samford
00:35there in Birmingham, Alabama, and he plays a style of basketball,
00:40fast-paced, full-court pressure that they call Buckyball.
00:44And he gave one of the better quotes of the season a couple of weeks ago.
00:48He said, quote,
00:49I'm not coaching college basketball afraid of my own shadow.
00:55Basketball is a war.
00:56We pick up people 94 feet because the court is 94 feet.
01:00We play to live.
01:01We don't play not to die.
01:02So he believes in the full-court pressure.
01:05It's a unique style of basketball.
01:07Not too many people play that, you know, in this day and age.
01:12Texas A&M got off to a good start.
01:15They were actually 17-4 at the end of January,
01:197-1 in SEC play.
01:21They actually led the SEC by themselves when the calendar flipped to February.
01:26Hadn't played as well down the stretch.
01:28They're 4-7 in their last 11.
01:31But like you said, I think the Aggies play a tougher schedule.
01:34I think the NCAA tournament gives us an opportunity for teams to kind of reset
01:39and start over.
01:41And we've seen teams come in on losing streaks that performed well,
01:44especially in that first game.
01:46I think this game should be around to pick them.
01:48So these points feel like a bonus to me.
01:50I like the Aggies plus 2.5 over St. Mary's.
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