MONDAY, MARCH 19 | SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 | © 2018 STUDENT MEDIA
OH, HOW
SWEET IT IS
Provided by Lexi Baird — DAILY TAR HEEL and Aaron Sprecher — Texas A&M Athletics
No. 7 A&M men’s basketball upsets No. 2 UNC for trip to Sweet 16 By Ryan MacDonald @Ryan_MacDonald2 In a game where everything needed to go right for the Aggies to upset the defending national champions and go to the NCAA Sweet 16 for the fifth time in program history, everything went right. The seven-seed A&M men’s basketball team (22-12) defeated two-seed North Carolina 86-65 on Sunday night. The Aggies started the game with a nearly flawless first half. Freshman guard T.J. Starks got the Aggies on the board first with a threepoint shot. The Tarheels soon responded with an 11-4 run and held an 11-7 lead at the first media timeout. Sophomore forward Robert Williams said the Aggies took the game chunk by chunk and didn’t get too concerned with the game as a whole. “We all told each other every media timeout ‘let’s win this media timeout, let’s win this half’ and that’s what happens,” Williams said in a video on the team’s official Twitter account. The Aggies struggled to get into an offen-
sive rhythm and trailed 20-13. The maroon and white began to gel starting at 11:37 mark when the Aggies went on a 15-0 run. Junior center Tyler Davis led Aggies in scoring during that run, netting nine points and giving the Aggies a 28-20 with just over six minutes remaining in the half. “We know we have the advantage on the inside against most teams so we just do what we do everyday just go to wore on the inside and eat glass,” Davis said. Junior forward D.J. Hogg caught fire near the end of the half, netting seven points in the last six minutes. Usually very strong from behind the arc, North Carolina struggled in the first half, making just eight percent of their three-point shots (1-of-13) in the first half. Led by Starks’ two made three-point shots, the first and last shots of the half, the Aggies sunk 46 percent (5-of-11) of their shots from deep. UNC missed their last six shots of the half and the Aggies held a 42-28 lead at the half. The 42 points the Aggies scored tied the school record for most points scored in the M. BASKETBALL ON PG. 4
No. 4 women complete 17 point comeback to defeat DePaul By Alex Miller @AlexMill20 Everyone in Reed Arena knew Chennedy Carter was going to take the final shot. Texas A&M’s freshman point guard had indeed nearly single-handedly led the Aggies back from 17 points down to defeat DePaul. And with 3.2 seconds left, Carter drained a three-pointer from the right side of the key in transition to put A&M ahead 80-79. “For once in my life, I zipped it,” A&M head coach Gary Blair said. “I didn’t tell her take the three. I really would have wanted the drive, but I didn’t tell her one thing on that last shot. When she was on the roll, I don’t know how many shots she made in a row in that last quarter; but it was pretty special.” Then, with 1.5 seconds to go, forward Jasmine Lumpkin stole the Blue Demons’ inbound pass to seal the victory, sending A&M (26-9) to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2014 with the win Sunday afternoon. “I know my role is defense, so they wanted me on the ball and they’re confident with me doing that,” Lumpkin said. “I knew last year
around this time, too, I got a big steal. I’m just happy to get that steal for the team, so we can keep it moving.” In the second half alone, Carter scored 32 points on 11-of-21 shooting, including a 7-of-8 mark from three-point range. It was an exceptional turnaround for Carter, who went 1-of-8 from the field in the first half. “We had a good talk in the locker room,” Carter said. “The thing that brought us together was coach [Blair] got us really hunkered down.” Down the stretch, Blair was yelling at his players to get the ball to Carter. DePaul knew what was coming, but was unable to stop Carter. “She’s just a great player and so she could get to the the rim,” DePaul head coach Doug Bruno said. “She still was very much on fire. We didn’t do anything to stop it.” Additionally, A&M forward Anriel Howard scored 18 points, adding 19 rebounds. Her efforts were needed, as A&M center Khaalia Hillsman was stifled all game, finishing with just six points on 1-of-4 shooting. M. BASKETBALL ON PG. 4
Jesse Everett — THE BATTALION
The winning piece depicts a phoenix being reborn.
Drawn together ArtFest exhibit showcases student creations in MSC By Jane Turchi @janeturchi The walls of James R. Reynolds Student Art Gallery are lined with 135 pieces of work crafted by current students, celebrating talent across the university. All of the work was submitted for ArtFest, an annual student art competition and exhibition sponsored by the Memorial Student Center’s Visual Arts Committee. ArtFest winners were announced at the exhibition’s opening reception on March 8. Winning submissions and other student-made pieces will be on display until April 21. Julie Choi, visualization freshman, was the first place winner with her piece “Phoenix of Immortality” and said while this is her first year participating in ArtFest, she has enjoyed entering art competitions. “It’s kind of fun to put your work in and if you are lucky enough to get ARTFEST ON PG. 2
Jesse Everett — THE BATTALION
Texas A&M University used South by Southwest as an opportunity to show the effect A&M has around the world.
Texas A&M displays global impact at SXSW Four day long exhibition showcases university with virtual reality booth By Brad Morse @BradSMorse53 AUSTIN, Texas — In the heart of the state capital, Texas A&M stood tall among thousands of exhibitions at the annual South by Southwest media and technology festival. With an exhibition booth in the Austin Convention Center, panels hosted in the Courtyard Marriott and a student making a pitch for her patented idea to potential investors, A&M showed its prowess in Austin over the course of the week. A&M’s main attraction took place from March 11-14 in the Austin Convention Center, where the university set up its exhibition booth. The aim of the booth was to showcase the impact A&M has on a global scale, according to Michael Green, manager of Emerging
and Interactive Media at A&M and Class of 2011. “There are so many people here from outside the United States, and so most of those people have no idea what Texas A&M is,” Green said. “So they leave the trade show booth knowing that we’re a university in Texas, but that we have a global impact, we’re not just doing stuff for Texas. That’s what we want to push, that A&M is a global university.” The worldwide impact of A&M was displayed primarily through virtual reality. Green said several Aggies working around the globe were selected to be filmed and the videos were then played through a VR headset, allowing festival-goers the chance to see each Aggie’s work unfold around them. “We just are finding stories of incredible Aggies, whether they are faculty doing incredible research or former students that are doing incredible things,” Green said. “For instance, we have a former student who engineered the expansion of the Panama Canal. This year, we
went to some really cool study abroad locations that we’ve sent our students to. So we’re using the medium of virtual reality and immersive storytelling to show people these A&M stories.” The booth was staffed by current students, including Mariam Harutunian, urban and regional planning senior. Harutunian said she came to work with the exhibition via the Office of Admissions and hoped to show her appreciation for A&M to any festival-goers. “I’m here to support A&M’s marketing and communications, but also to advocate for A&M,” Harutunian said. “Showing how much I love the school, showing them our global impact. I’ve loved just showing what A&M does. Meeting a whole bunch of really cool people from different backgrounds … so it’s really interesting to see all these different people come by.” Harutunian said the most interesting interSXSW ON PG. 3