Kentucky goes one-and-done in the SEC Tournament again. Texas A&M beats Cats in Nashville.
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Game day: Texas A&M 97, No. 9 Kentucky 87
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Friday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Texas A&M at the SEC Tournament in Nashville, Tenn.
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For the second straight year, Kentucky was ousted from the SEC Tournament in its first game.
Texas A&M upset UK 97-87 in the league quarterfinals Friday night in Bridgestone Arena, extending the Wildcats’ skid in the tournament, which they have not won since 2018.
Rob Dillingham led Kentucky with 27 points, and Reed Sheppard added 14 points off the bench.
Antonio Reeves was mired in foul trouble Friday night. The Wildcats’ leading scorer sat the final 5:43 of the first half after picking up his second foul. He went to the bench with 18:16 left after his third foul, then was called for his fourth foul with 8:06 left at the Cats down 10.
Reeves finished with 13 points, snapping his streak of seven consecutive games with at least 20 points.
Wade Taylor IV led the Aggies with 32 points. He scored 31 against UK in the two teams’ only regular-season meeting.
Texas A&M, which leads the nation in offensive rebounding rate, outscored Kentucky 26-9 in second-chance points. The Aggies also outscored UK 18-4 in points off turnovers. A&M committed just six turnovers. The Cats had 14.
Kentucky trailed by as many as 11 points in the first half, and Texas A&M led for 18:44 of the game’s first 20 minutes. The Aggies took their first lead 57 seconds into the game and ultimately jumped out to an 8-1 advantage, forcing John Calipari to call a timeout with 18:17 left until halftime.
Not long after that, the Cats made six of seven shots, briefly taking a 16-15 lead, which fired up the heavily pro-UK crowd in Nashville and forced Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams to call a timeout of his own to halt the momentum. The Aggies took the lead right back 11 seconds after that timeout, and they didn’t trail again for the remainder of the game.
Sheppard made his first five shots from the field — three of them 3-pointers — and had 14 points at the break. Dillingham added 10 points, three rebounds and three assists in the first half.
Taylor — the SEC’s preseason player of the year — scored 18 points before halftime, going 4-for-9 from 3-point range in the first half. Texas A&M came into the night averaging 6.7 made 3s per game and shooting 27.7% from long range. The Aggies made 8 of 16 from deep in the first half.
Kentucky was never closer than five points over the final 12 minutes of the game and trailed by as many as 16.
Texas A&M finished the season with a 2-0 record against Kentucky, which lost 97-92 in overtime in College Station on Jan. 13.
Kentucky (23-9) lost its first game of the SEC Tournament for the second consecutive year and the third time in the past four seasons. The Wildcats were upset in last year’s quarterfinals by Vanderbilt, and they haven’t been to the SEC championship game since 2018, the last year they won the league title.
The loss Friday night ended a five-game winning streak for the Wildcats, who will go into Selection Sunday this weekend as a likely 3 or 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Texas A&M (20-13) kept its NCAA Tournament bubble hopes alive with the victory. The Aggies were picked to finish second in the league during the preseason — their finishing position in last year’s SEC standings — but ended up tied for seventh with a 9-9 mark in the conference.
This story was originally published March 15, 2024 at 9:19 PM.
