Aggies To Face Connecticut Team That Only Won By 56
March 20, 2009 – 7:32 am by Jimmy Shapiro
One of the stranger match-ups in the first round was Texas A&M against BYU. These two teams also played in the first round of the tourney last year and just like last year, Texas A&M dominated BYU, winning 79-66.. Two years ago Texas A&M had the hottest coaching name in the business in Billy Gillespie after his Texas A&M team led by Acie Law went 13-3 in the Big 12 and lost to Memphis by 1 in the Sweet 16. After the great 2006-2007 season, Gillespie got one of the most desired jobs in college hoops as the head coach of Kentucky. Two years and zero tournament wins later, there is already talk about Gillespie not being long for the Kentucky job.
Meanwhile, Gillespie’s replacement at Texas A&M, Mark Turgeon, may be a better coach. He played on Larry Brown’s championship team with Danny and the Miracles at Kansas and learned from the master. When he was coaching at Wichita State, he took the Shockers to the Sweet 16 before losing to George Mason.
The Aggies almost beat UCLA last year in the second round (they lost by two) and once again play the a number one seed in the second round, this year it’s UCONN which only won by 56 points on Thursday.
Mark Turgeon joined Tirico and Van Pelt on ESPN Radio after the Aggies victory over BYU.
On playing BYU in the first round for the second straight year:
“It’s crazy. BYU’s name came up, I was like I know we’re not playing them. And then our name came up.”
“We’re a lot different than last year’s team. We were really big and somewhat slow last year, but we were a good basketball team. This year we’re running a lot more, playing faster, running more motions They probably had to make more adjustments than we did going into the game.”
Listen to Mark Turgeon on ESPN Radio with Tirico and Van Pelt (24:30 into podcast)
Tags: BYU, ESPN Radio, Mark Turgeon, Texas A&M Aggies
