Texas A&M
1-0,0-0SEC
New Orleans
0-2,0-0Southland
Aggies Defeat New Orleans, 82-53, in Season Opener
Nov 29, 2020 | Men's Basketball
BRYAN-COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — Quenton Jackson scored a career-high 28 points and grabbed seven rebounds, Andre Gordon added 15 points and Texas A&M opened its season with an 82-53 victory over New Orleans on Sunday.
Jackson scored 13 of Texas A&M's opening 16 points and finished the half with 17 as the Aggies led 41-24. The Aggies had a 12-0 run in the half and closed on a 9-0 spurt with 3-pointers by freshman Hayden Hefner and Andre Gordon.
Jackson, a senior, topped his previous best of 20 points last season by going 11 of 13 from the field against New Orleans. He was 4 of 6 from distance and added three steals in 28 minutes.
Freshman Hassan Diarra added 14 points with four assists and six steals for Texas A&M, which has won 20 straight openers. Savion Flagg, who is the team's leading returning scorer at 10.4 points per game, had nine points, 11 rebounds and six assists.
LaDarius Marshall scored 14 points for New Orleans (0-2). Troy Green added 11 points and Damion Rosser had 10.
Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams started his collegiate head coaching career at New Orleans in the 2006-07 season. The Aggies stay at home to face Tarleton State on Wednesday.
1-0 ?#GigEm?? #getBETTER?? pic.twitter.com/YIOy3jqjIW
— Texas A&M Basketball (@aggiembk) November 29, 2020
Texas A&M Men's Basketball Postgame Notes
Texas A&M 82, New Orleans 53
Reed Arena (Bryan-College Station, Texas)
RECORDS & SERIES NOTES
- Texas A&M opened the 2020-21 season with a 82-53 victory over New Orleans Sunday afternoon at Reed Arena.
- Texas A&M extends its streak to 20 consecutive season-opening wins.
- The Aggies all-time record between the two teams is now 2-2 with Texas A&M winning the last two.
TEAM NOTES
- With 2:49 left in the first half, the Aggies went on an 11-2 run en-route to a 41-24 advantage to close out the opening stanza.
- Texas A&M forced 27 turnovers, the most in the Buzz Williams era.
- The Aggies had 16 steals, the most since 2010 when the Maroon & White had 16 against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
- Texas A&M outscored New Orleans 18-4 on the fast break.
- Texas A&M used the starting lineup combination of Jonathan Aku, Savion Flagg, Andre Gordon, Quenton Jackson and Zach Walker for the first time this season (1-0).
INDIVIDUAL NOTES
- Quenton Jackson set career highs in points (28), 3-pointers made (4) and rebounds (7).
- Andre Gordon scored 15 points and was 3-of-5 from beyond the arc to match a career high in 3-pointers made.
- Savion Flagg matched his career high in assists with six. Flagg also grabbed a team-high 11 rebounds to mark his 11th career game with 10-or-more rebounds.
- Hassan Diarra scored 14 points and recorded six steals in his collegiate debut. His six steal performance marks the most by an Aggie since 2015 when Alex Caruso had six steals against Kansas State.
- Hayden Hefner buried three 3-pointers to account for all nine of his points in his collegiate debut.
- Zach Walker made his first career start.
- A total of five Aggies made their debut in the opener, including Kevin Marfo, Hassan Diarra, Hayden Hefner, LaDamien Bradford and Jaxson Robinson.
- Buzz Williams is 17-14 in his career at Texas A&M and 270-169 in his 14 seasons as a head coach.
UP NEXT
Texas A&M hosts Tarleton State on Wednesday, December 2 at Reed Arena at 6 p.m. on SEC Network.
Texas A&M Quotes
Head Coach Buzz Williams
On the team's shooting…
"We have to continue working on making sure the shots we shoot are the shots we ultimately want to be shooting. Which will help out our percentage. We have to continue to make sure on a daily basis we're doing more than just shooting during practice. I think our staff and kids have done a good job of doing that. Is this what we want to see at the end of every game? Absolutely. Is this something we are going to be able to do each game? That is yet to be determined, but it was for sure an encouraging start today."
On Quenton Jackson's performance…
"I think Q has been diligent in how he has handled the last eight months when he was away from us. I think since he has been back, he has been diligent in his time on the floor alone and in his individual skill work. I do think he has to be a catalyst for us. So much of what I think Q's offense is derived from is his energy level and his discipline defensively. When he does what he is supposed to do defensively, I think it translates into his offensive game. Similar to what I said earlier, Q knows the shots he needs to shoot and how we play. When he doesn't force up shots that we would consider bad, he is going to be even more efficient than he was last year. We are going to need him to be an efficient and efficient player from the perimeter."
Senior Guard Quenton Jackson
On how his shooting has improved…
"I felt like that was one of the things I needed to work on over the summer about my game. I shot about 28% from the 3-point line last year, which was not that good. I made that an emphasis to work on this year, so I could come out and help my team more."
On the teams shooting approach this year…
"I feel like this year's shooting will be a whole lot better than last year's. We have a lot more players who are considered shooters this year. Last year, we had people who could play basketball but weren't shooters per se. I think our identity this year will be a little bit better overall. We'll be able to play honestly, which means guys like me, Jay Jay (Chandler), Hassan (Diarra) and Andre (Gordon) can get downhill and force the defense to help so we can kick out the shooters who can knock down shots."
On Hassan Diarra's performance…
"With this being his first game, I felt like he did well. He came out excited and accepted the spot light. Of course, he had some mental mistakes and defensive ones as well, but who doesn't? Overall, I think he did great for his first rep of Division 1 basketball."
Sophomore Guard Andre Gordon
On his outlook coming into this season…
"Coming from high school to college I didn't play in a big game until I got here. Last year was a great first rep for me. I was able to play a lot of minutes as a freshman, which helped me. This year, the sky is the limit and I am going to keep playing aggressively and get my teammates open."
On the freshmen's performance today…
"I think the freshmen did great today. They came in and did what they had to do. Hayden (Hefner), Pop (LaDamien Bradford), Jax (Jaxson Robinson) and Hass (Hassan Diarra) did great. We had practice this morning, which was the first rep of that. This was their first Division 1 basketball game and they were excited to play. Warm-ups were smooth so I think they did good."
New Orleans Quotes
Head Coach Mark Slessinger
On Quenton Jackson's offensive performance…
"We didn't do a good job adjusting to the 3-pointers. Whatever we did try didn't work, obviously. We have to make better adjustments moving forward. He had a great hand, and great mark for his team to keep finding him."
On A&M's multitude of 3-pointers…
"We had game planned for them to shoot a bunch of them. We got lost on four or five rotations where we might have gotten a little too cute in some of our schemes of where we are at. If I could go back and do it over again, I would have played it straighter. That probably contributed to about five or six of their 12 threes."
On the momentum shift early in the game…
"We had a couple costly turnovers there where we stopped attacking their press. I thought that when we were able to attack the press and get past the first layer to make the second pass was where we were successful. There in that run, we did not do that. We had costly turnovers which turned into easy finishes for them. We didn't get to the line nearly as much. We got there four times today, which at BYU Thanksgiving night we got there 32 times. So normally we'll make more than our opponents attempt by schematically the things we do and part of that goes to A&M to take a bunch of charges and force turnovers. There were some guys who were winded for us, so I either couldn't get them out quick enough or we just had a bad rotation. Credit goes out to Buzz and his crew today."
