The competition for one of the four double-byes in the Southeastern Conference tournament gets real Wednesday when No. 20 Arkansas plays Texas A&M in Fayetteville, Ark.
Arkansas (20-7, 10-4 SEC) is in a three-way tie with No. 17 Alabama and No. 22 Tennessee for second in the conference standings, two games behind No. 7 Florida.
Texas A&M (19-8, 9-5) would jump over the Razorbacks with a victory that also would give them the advantage in the two-team tiebreaker. They also face an appreciably easier schedule to close out the regular season.
“You don’t want to talk about the significance of these wins,” Texas A&M coach Bucky McMillan said after the Aggies beat Oklahoma 75-71 on the road Saturday for their second straight win.
“But we told our guys before the Ole Miss game (an 80-77 win last Wednesday), the NCAA Tournament starts now. If you are going to win the NCAA Tournament, anybody has to win six games in a row.
“That’s the mindset you have to have with that level of focus. We had that versus Ole Miss, and I think we had that (Saturday).”
Arkansas held off a double-bye challenge Saturday, pulling away in the final six minutes for a 94-86 home victory over Missouri. Texas, Missouri, No. 25 Vanderbilt and Kentucky are tied for sixth in the league at 8-6.
“They’re good,” Arkansas coach John Calipari said of the Aggies. “They press, they scramble, they play with unbelievable energy. It’s another term … we have four games left. We could lose all four.”
Arkansas’ final three regular-season games all are on the road at Florida and Missouri and home to Texas. Texas A&M finishes with home games against Texas and Kentucky and an away game at LSU.
Arkansas forward Billy Richmond III had 21 points against Missouri for his third straight 20-point game.
Since joining the starting lineup following an 85-77 loss to Kentucky on Jan. 31, Richmond is averaging 18.6 points with 3.8 rebounds, 2.8 assists, seven total blocked shots and with six steals while shooting 63.2% from the field.
Arkansas has a short seven-man rotation, and Richmond occasionally was used to defend Missouri bigs when Calipari used a smaller lineup with guards Darius Acuff Jr., Meleek Thomas and D.J. Wagner.
“You’re trying to say, ‘How do we do this?'” Calipari said about his short bench. “One of the ways is playing three guards. (Richmond) is like a Swiss knife. Whatever you want to do with it. He’s a good player.”
Freshman Acuff had his eighth straight 20-point game in the victory over the Tigers. Freshman Thomas has a combined 38 points and has made 8 of 11 3-pointers in the last two games and is 12 of 24 from distance in the last five.
“They’re not shooters or athletes, they’re basketball players, every one of them,” Calipari said of his group.
Texas A&M forward Rashaun Agee had 18 points against Oklahoma, when the Aggies survived despite missing nine of their final 10 field goal attempts. They limited Oklahoma to 32.8% from the field.
“At the end of the day, that was just an old school win by our guys on the defensive end,” McMillan said.
Agee leads the Aggies in scoring (14.0 points) and rebounding (8.9). Guards Marcus Hill, Ruben Dominguez and Rylan Griffen are averaging a shade over 11 points per game.
