By ROBERT CESSNAThe Texas A&M men's basketball team had to beat Oklahoma, that was the bottom line.
It didn't matter if it was a blowout or a cliffhanger, ugly or pretty, or even controversial.
The Aggies did it, eking out a 65-62 victory Tuesday night at Reed Arena in a game that's become so typical in the Big 12. The 40-minute battle was decided on a few plays that went the home team's way.
Maybe the biggest was A&M sophomore point guard Dash Harris hitting a 3-pointer for a 61-60 lead. That came on the heels of Harris hitting his only other jumper of the game.
"That was their biggest shot of their season," Oklahoma head coach Jeff Capel said.
Maybe. And it might have been even bigger for A&M head coach Mark Turgeon.
"I was thinking about retiring if we didn't win this game," said Turgeon, managing a smile after aging about 10 years last week.
The Aggies were coming off a gallant overtime effort against top-ranked Texas, but they still lost. Besides, it counted the same as the 88-65 spanking Kansas State had administered the game before that.
The only way to put a road setback behind you is to win at home, making someone else stew about an opportunity that slipped away.
Oklahoma two weeks ago was blasted at Baylor, 91-60, but bounced back at home to beat Oklahoma State and Missouri. The Sooners trailed 10-0 against Missouri before pleasing the home folks.
Tuesday night, A&M squandered a 12-point first-half lead as the Sooners came back to take a 54-47 lead. But Harris dashed OU's vision of a three-game winning streak.
"Yeah, that was huge," Turgeon said. "Down two, he just stepped in and knocked it down."
Harris, though, had lots of help.
Junior B.J. Holmes regained his shooting touch. Holmes hit 4 of 6 field goals in the first half, including 2 of 4 on 3-pointers. He'd been 2 of 19 in league play, including 0 for 13 on 3s, the last one being blocked in overtime at Texas.
Senior guard Donald Sloan played a team-high 37 minutes Tuesday, stepping up big late. Sloan and Holmes also played good defense down the stretch after OU had gained control by driving inside to complement its 3-point shooting.
A&M's gritty play was appreciated by a season-high 5,544 students who more than made up for the empty seats among the announced crowd of 11,109.
Turgeon made a plea at his Monday press conference for the students to show up, promising them the team would go up in the stands for the Aggie War Hymn if 4,000 showed up. He and the team gladly lived up to that promise with the third-largest student crowd in school history.
Turgeon plans to make it a tradition every time 4,000 students show up. Turgeon, who is shooting for 6,000, uses Facebook and Twitter to get his message across.
The transplanted Kansas gym rat is learning. He still doesn't understand why basketball isn't a big deal in Aggieland until after the holidays, but he's working through it.
He also made sure his team avoided a disastrous 1-3 start in league play, which would have left it two games back in the loss column to seven teams.
A&M's now kinda back to square one in the league -- two up at home, two down on the road.
The Aggies need to take care of Colorado at Reed on Saturday before heading to Oklahoma State on Jan. 27. for an ESPN2 game. It would be nice if A&M would have an easy game, but it's hard to expect that in the Big 12.
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