Croome: Aggie men have lots of room for improvement

A second look at Texas A&M's lopsided loss to Iowa State on Saturday didn't change A&M coach Billy Kennedy's first assessment of his team's performance.

In a quick overview, Kennedy repeated that the defense has to compete harder and at a higher level if the Aggies are going to compete with teams such as the Cyclones, which Kennedy praised as being a very good team.

One reason the defense is going to have to perform better is the offense has stumbled its way through the last two games, especially in the opening half.

A&M (9-5 overall and 0-2 in Big 12) is a combined 16 for 63 (25 percent) from the floor in the first 20 minutes of Big 12 games. It's a team effort, as not one starter has shot better than 40 percent in either first half.

Kennedy addressed a few of the problems at a Monday press conference.

The first is they are not getting the ball into the lane.

"It's obvious we have to do a better job of getting the ball in the paint," said Kennedy. "I think we go side to side too much, and offensively we're not attacking."

The result is A&M, which was scoring nearly 50 percent of its points in the paint has been outscored 26-14 inside in the opening half, which has helped opponents hold a 72-40 margin in the first half.

Part of the problem is 6-8 David Loubeau, who has been the first or second option inside the past two years, is not getting enough touches and has only taken 16 shots the last two games. Three-fourths of those came in the second half of the Baylor game, which, not coincidentally, was the only half A&M outscored its opponent.

"I think David can do a better job posting in the block. He's getting pushed off the block. We need to work with him on that. The other part of it is they are not guarding some of our guys," Kennedy said. "They're putting two or three people around him so when he catches it, if he doesn't make a quick move -- it's usually a fade away or a jump hook."

A more intriguing assessment, though, was that Kennedy believes that the Aggies' performances have dropped off since the return of last season's leading scorer forward Khris Middleton, who was out for nearly the entire nonconference schedule with an injured knee.

"Since Khris has come back, for whatever reason, we're not playing as well as we probably were before," Kennedy said. "We've got to figure out how to get that to work in a positive way and get better from there."

Middleton is 7 of 29 from the floor, including 1 of 6 from behind the arc, in the last two games.

He shot 45 percent overall and 36 percent on 3-pointers last season.

Kennedy believes a majority of the problem is that Middleton is still not completely healthy and it is affecting his confidence.

"Well, he hasn't been totally back. I think he's still hurt," Kennedy said. "He didn't practice much last week. We tried to run some sets early to get him going, but I don't think he's gained his confidence back in his leg or in his game."

The Aggies better find something quickly or the season could be lost.

It doesn't get any easier with the Aggies traveling to Austin on Wednesday. The Longhorns have won nine in a row over A&M at the Erwin Center.

Texas lost its entire starting lineup from last season and starts three freshmen, but has held its own at 11-4 overall and 1-1 in the Big 12.

"I think our character will weather the storm, and our coaches will weather the storm, and we'll continue to be positive and work through it," said Kennedy, adding it was too late to make any drastic changes. "We're going to have some tough moments. We're not deep enough, we're not totally healthy, and we're not as athletic as I would like to, night in and night out, put on a great performance. So I'm hoping our character will keep us solid all the way through and if that happens we'll win the games we're supposed to win."

Richard Croome's e-mail is richard.croome@theeagle.com