Cessna: Rest of A&M's season looking scary

With just under four minutes left in Saturday's Texas A&M-Iowa State men's basketball game, two ESPN cameramen huddled about 20 youngsters who whooped and hollered, flashing thumbs up when the telecast resumed.

It was the most positive emotion shown by anyone wearing maroon at Reed Arena as the Iowa State Cyclones rolled to a 74-50 victory. A&M was totally dominated in a game it needed to win, sandwiched between a Monday loss at Baylor and a Wednesday game at Texas. So it was puzzling that A&M was beaten so soundly with so much at stake.

Now the rest of the season looks scary because A&M wasn't even competitive against ISU. Granted, the Cyclones are a program on the rise, but they're not a Top 25 team, and probably won't finish in the top four of the Big 12. Yet they handed the Aggies the most lopsided loss at Reed Arena, which opened in 1998. So where does that leave A&M, which has made six straight NCAA Tournaments? There's no way that streak continues unless things improve dramatically and rapidly.

A&M needs to play with the sense of urgency the Cyclones displayed.

ISU sophomore forward Royce White said the Cyclones "hungered" to break a 10-game road losing streak in league play. White played that way despite battling the flu as he posted the Big 12's first triple-double in six seasons -- 18 rebounds, 10 points and 10 assists. Afterward, he vomited in a garbage can on the way to the dressing room.

A&M fans had to feel like throwing up as Saturday's disjointed effort looked too much like games before Billy Gillispie arrived in 2004. For three seasons under Gillispie and then four more under Mark Turgeon, you could count on the Aggies playing hard. Oh, there were a few stinkers, but none as bad as Saturday. Even worse is that A&M apparently practiced the way it played.

"I wish I could tell you I was surprised," A&M first-year head coach Billy Kennedy said. "We've gotta change this culture. We've gotta do a better job of coaching intensity, and they've got to do a better job of bringing it."

It was the second straight game A&M stumbled at the start. The Aggies are shooting only 25.4 percent from the field in the first half of Big 12 games -- 16 of 63. A&M's defense hasn't been much better. ISU missed its first seven shots, many of them good looks, then hit 16 of 23.

"They came out ready to play," A&M junior guard Elston Turner said. "We just didn't -- there were spots when we [did]."

But they were far and few as the Aggies took a huge step backward.

A&M managed to bounce back from a 30-17 halftime deficit at Baylor to make the Bears fight for a 61-52 victory. This time ISU took a 42-23 halftime lead and the game was over. It was a sad league home opener for a team that was picked first, along with Kansas, in the Big 12 coaches preseason poll. You couldn't blame fans for leaving early, though some stayed for the postgame autograph session, which Turner admitted was tough to do.

"You do it for the kids," Turner said. "You just have to have a positive attitude. It shows you what faithful fans we have even after that kind of loss."

Turner and the Aggies better start playing better if they want them to keep coming back.

* Robert Cessna's email address is robert.cessna@theeagle.com