The locker room at Reed Arena was a place of stark honesty on Tuesday night. After watching a 12-point first-half lead vanish into a 96-85 loss, both the players and the coaching staff were left picking up the pieces of a performance that Mark Pope called "really disappointing" in his interview with Tom Leach.
The player's perspective: "We relaxed"
Brandon Garrison didn't mince words when describing the 27-3 run that effectively ended the game before halftime. For Garrison, the issue wasn't just a lack of shots; it was a lack of killer instinct once the Cats got comfortable.
“All I got to say about the game is we went out there and threw the first punch, then we got punched, and we never came back from that,” Garrison said with Goose Givens on the radio. “We relaxed as a team. When we get ahead, we relax instead of putting our foot down. They made their run, and we never responded.”
Garrison finished with 8 points and 4 rebounds in 17 minutes, but his assessment of the team’s mental state hit harder than his stat line.
The coach's perspective: "Our gameplan was not good"
Mark Pope was equally critical, taking full ownership of a defensive scheme that allowed the Aggies to shoot 13-of-28 from deep. Pope admitted that the "attention to focus" was missing and that the team's ball protection simply vanished under pressure. That has been an issue all year long; the Cats have these turnovers that just make no sense.
“We just got careless,” Pope said of the run. “We had done a spectacular job of winning catches, taking care of the ball... might’ve been a little fatigue, maybe a little distraction... we gifted them an opportunity. We were really poor defensively all night long... our gameplan was not good.”
He is right, whatever they thought they should be doing defensively was the exact opposite of what they should have been doing.
Pope also addressed the disappearing act of Collin Chandler, who took just five shots after his career-high 23-point performance on Saturday.
“They are the top three-point defensive team in our league, partly because they speed you up,” Pope explained. “And they definitely did that to us.”
Where do the Cats go from here?
With only the regular-season finale against No. 5 Florida remaining, Pope is looking for a leader to emerge. But with a short bench and mounting injuries, including the late ankle roll for Trent Noah, he says the responsibility falls on everyone.
“We don’t have that many guys, so it’s everybody,” Pope said. “This is where you can make great things happen. It’s our job to do that now.”
The Cats (19-11, 10-7) now need to beat Florida, or playing in the SEC opening round next Wednesday is a real possibility, as they can still drop to the 10-seed.