Clemence scores 20 to power A&M's exhibition comeback over ASU

Exhibition: Texas A&M 95, Arizona State 88
Box Score

ROSENBERG, Texas — This team won’t win any Oscars on opening night, but the preview of Bucky Ball received positive reviews at the Fort Bend Epicenter.

The Aggies used a furious second-half comeback fueled by Zach Clemence to beat Arizona State at “The Preview” in exhibition action, 95-88.

“We just kept hanging around,” head coach Bucky McMillan said. “Even though two of our leading scorers are out right now, we have depth. I think, with this team, it will be different guys every night, and tonight, it was Zach’s night.”

The Aggies were without their two best players in Pop Isaacs and Mackenzie Mgbako as they continue to recover from their respective injuries.

Meanwhile, Bobby Hurley’s Sun Devils were without their third and fourth options in Marcus Adams Jr. and Allen Mukeba.

With both teams shorthanded, the Aggies used their depth to outlast their opponent and pull away late.

Across college basketball, what you see in October will certainly not be what you will see in March, and no team embodies that more than the Aggies in Year 1 under McMillan.

With 15 new faces that haven’t played together in a brand-new system, early-game and early-season struggles are to be expected. That was the story of the first half as the Maroon & White committed 11 turnovers, shot just 36 percent from 3-point range and shot 60 percent at the free-throw line.

“With every team I’ve coached, the first game usually has too many turnovers, bad shots and too many fouls,” McMillan said.

Rylan Griffen’s two first-half triples kept the Aggies in it heading into halftime, but it was clear they had work to do to make up for the 42-40 deficit. They were the better team, but just weren’t playing like it.

“We had too many turnovers. We were missing free throws I hadn’t seen us miss, and we didn’t make many threes,” McMillan said. “But we did a good job fighting through that because there’s going to be nights where you can’t finish like you normally do on made shots.”

Danny Grant, TexAgs

Behind Clemence’s 20, Rylan Griffen was A&M’s next-leading scoring with 16 points.

Forcing turnovers is one thing, but making opponents pay is another. If the Aggies had lost, the paper-popper stat would’ve been ASU’s 26 points off turnovers compared to A&M’s five.

For a system that’s built on exerting extra energy to force turnovers, it can be crippling to force double-digit turnovers but fail to capitalize.

Still, the Aggies did not let this rattle them in their first live game against another team.

With shooters up and down this roster, Rubén Dominguez shot 2-for-7 on Sunday, and Griffen went 4-for-7 from behind the arc. Clemence is rarely mentioned at the top of that list by people outside the program, but the ones in that building know how crucial he is to this team.

After averaging just 1.7 points per game in his three years at Kansas, Clemence powered the comeback with 20 points on 5-for-6 shooting from deep in just 20 minutes of action. Because of his stat lines at Kansas, there were concerns about whether he could get his practice form to translate into a game. Sunday provided an early answer to that question.

“One of the biggest things we say is next play,” Clemence said. “I live my life by that, too. I take every moment and just say next play.”

When his team needed a spark, Clemence made the next play...and then the next and then the next. The Sun Devils had no answer for him. Trey after trey rained in during the final 10 minutes as Clemence took over the game and subsequently shut down the WiFi in the whole building.

The Aggie snipers shot 8-for-15 from deep in the second half and put up 55 points. The Reed Arena scoreboards better be able to hit triple digits, because 95 with an off-shooting half leaves a lot to be excited about offensively.

There was a lot to like about the fight A&M showed without their two best players, including the ball movement displayed in the second half, dominating the glass in the final 30 minutes and how they limited their own turnovers to just four in the final 16 minutes.

“This is the start of what we are. We’ve got a long way to go,” McMillan said. “I’m looking forward to getting to where we got to go.”

Can the Aggies clean up the turnovers, defend without fouling and get out to faster starts? That remains to be seen.

It’s only an exhibition, but if this team can build on it, March could look significantly better than this result in October.

A&M will officially start the season in eight days against Northwestern State at Reed Arena on Monday, Nov. 3.