Texas A&M coach Mark Turgeon's comments following Friday's season-ending loss to the Florida State Seminoles may be accurate, but it smacks a bit of whining:
"We could have beaten a lot of teams in this tournament, but Florida State was not a good matchup."
Turgeon's proclamation that the Aggies "could have beaten a lot of teams in this tournament," may very well be true, but the Aggies failed to beat the lower-seeded, lower-ranked Seminoles. The two teams play a similar brand of ugly basketball, and if I'm not mistaken the Aggies were well aware of this before the game began.
The Aggie coach continued, seemingly determined to convince the world that his squad is better than they actually are, um, except when they play tall, long teams:
"We lost three to Texas, two to Baylor, one to (Florida State) and one to Kansas. Seven of our nine losses were to tall, long teams. We just didn't do a great job with those teams."
Yeah, well, those teams are allowed in the tournament. They don't seed teams according to style of play, so who is Turgeon trying to convince here, his bosses? His contemporaries?
Knowing they have trouble against teams built this way, the Aggies weren't able to pull out the win against an arguably less-talented team. Part of what makes a great coach in any sport is knowing your team's and your opponent's strengths and weaknesses, then coming up with a gameplan.
Florida State certainly presented a tough matchup for the Aggies, but this is a game A&M should have won, and no amount of matchup spin is going to convince anyone otherwise.