Texas A&M's first league loss adds suspense to the SEC race

Maybe they got caught looking ahead to Saturday's marquee clash with Iowa State. Maybe they overlooked an Arkansas team they beat by 23 points three weeks ago. Maybe they let their frustration with the officiating affect their performance.

There are all sorts of excuses for Texas A&M's 74-71 loss in Fayetteville on Wednesday night, but none of them erase the fact that this was a damaging outcome for the fifth-ranked Aggies.

With a cushion of two or more games in the loss column over every other team in the SEC entering play on Wednesday night, Texas A&M appeared to be firmly in control of the league title chase. Not only is that lead now cut in half, the Aggies also still have games left on the schedule against fellow contenders Kentucky, LSU and South Carolina.

That Texas A&M's first SEC loss came at the hands of Arkansas has to be especially frustrating to coach Billy Kennedy and his staff. The Razorbacks are tough to beat at home and nearly won at Dayton, LSU and Georgia earlier this season, but they're also just 10-10 overall including non-conference losses against Akron and Mercer.

The galling aspect of Wednesday's loss for Texas A&M is that it had a handful of chances to tie or take the lead late in the game despite committing 21 turnovers, getting whistled for 25 fouls and shooting a meager 39.6 percent from the field.

With less than a minute to go and his team trailing by two, Texas A&M's Alex Caruso was called for a charge even though it appeared the Arkansas defender who took it wasn't set. Had the call gone Caruso's way, he would have gone to the foul line with the chance for a go-ahead three-point play.

That call was probably the single biggest play of the game, yet Texas A&M still had three more possessions in which it could have tied or taken the lead.

On the first, Caruso made an ill-advised turnover. On the second, Arkansas fouled intentionally to prevent a 3-point attempt and Danuel House sank two free throws to cut the deficit to one. And on the third, D.J. Hogg missed a fairly clean attempt at a game-tying 3-pointer at the buzzer.

How quickly Texas A&M can regroup and purge this memory from its mind will be key for the Aggies moving forward. They host the Big 12-contending Cyclones on Saturday and then face talented Vanderbilt and much improved South Carolina next week.

Texas A&M is still probably the favorite in the SEC, but Wednesday's loss erased much of the Aggies' margin for error in the coming weeks. Now their path is just a little bit tougher.

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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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