Oklahoma rolled past South Carolina in the first round of the SEC tournament on Wednesday in Nashville to set up a third season meeting with Texas A&M, a match that means much more to the Sooners than denying the Aggies a season three-peat.
Playing for their NCAA Tournament lives, the 11th-seeded Sooners overcame a 13-point first-half deficit to beat the Gamecocks 86-74.
Nijel Pack scored 24 points and Derrion Reid had 20 for the Sooners (18-14), who are projected to be one of the final teams left out of the 68-team NCAA field before conference tournaments began.
“We know this is a survive-and-advance type of time,” Pack said on the SEC Network. “It’s one game at a time. That’s all we’re focused on.”
Sixth-seeded Texas A&M (21-10), which had a first-round tournament bye, beat the Sooners 83-76 and 75-71 in the regular season.
The latter was the Sooners’ 11th loss in 13 games and seemed to doom their NCAA chances, but they have won five straight since. That streak includes wins over Auburn, Missouri and Texas, all considered to be in the tournament field after Wednesday games.
“We had a different route that we had to take,” Pack said. “Sometimes it sucked to go through hard times, but I’m glad it shaped us into the team we are today.”
The Aggies have won two in a row and four of six after a season-worst four-game losing streak in early February that included setbacks to now-No. 15 Alabama, then-No. 17 Florida and then-No. 19 Vanderbilt.
“The way we ended the season, we aren’t going up there with the weight of the world on our shoulders,” Aggies coach Bucky McMillan said. “Our players should be able to go up there and play loose.”
The Aggies come in waves with their full-game, full court press. Forward Rashaun Agee leads five double-figure scorers with 14.7 points and 8.8 rebounds per game. Nine players average at least 15 minutes per game.
Agee had a season-high 26 points and his 12th double-double in a 94-91 triple-overtime victory over LSU in the regular-season finale on Saturday. He has averaged 19.0 points per game in the last six.
The Aggies averaged 29.8 three-point attempts and 10.9 makes entering the SEC tournament, both 14th in Division I.
