Before his stint at Park High School in Minnesota, basketball wasn’t really on Pharrel Payne’s radar. But on Thursday night, the Texas A&M junior forward/center’s presence on the court at Ball Arena was as large as he is — all six feet, nine inches of him.
His emphatic alley-oop on a lob from senior guard Wade Taylor IV with 4 minutes, 23 seconds left in the first half of the fourth-seeded Aggies’ 80-71, round one NCAA tournament victory over No. 13 Yale was just the appetizer for the level of pain he inflicted on the Bulldogs all night.
He finished the game with three jams, 25 points and 10 of the Aggies’ 37 boards. Thursday night was his first personal NCAA tournament appearance after two years at Minnesota.
“The first time I had dreams of coming to the NCAA tournament was probably high school,” Payne said. “That’s when I really started playing basketball and started to understand it. I feel like my friends kind of pushed me, because I was that one kid that was super tall compared to everybody else. They were like, ‘You kind of have to do something with it.’ So they forced me to play basketball. I’m thankful for having those friends, and I love them.”
The Aggies, certainly, are grateful for the daunting presence he’s added in the post — something they sorely needed. Prior to his NCAA tournament debut, he had been netting 9.4 points per game and 4.9 rebounds per game.
He played a vital role in catalyzing the Aggies’ offense in their 40-29 first-half lead, especially for a team that, according to Joe Lunardi prior to the contest, was “clearly the worst shooting team from a power conference in the tournament, ranking 317th in effective field goal percentage.”
The Aggies finished the game shooting 51.7% from the field (31 of 60), and outrebounded the Bulldogs by a 37 to 29 margin.
Maybe it was something in the thin, 5,280-foot air that helped Payne rise to the challenge.
“He gives us a presence at the rim, on both sides of the ball,” head coach Buzz Williams said. “I think that allows some mistakes to happen on occasion defensively because we know that he’s going to be behind us. And I also think even when we’re not, quote, running a play to throw it to him, when the play that we run not to throw it to him doesn’t work, he’s always a pressure release that allows, potentially, a non-play to work just because of his ability to score at the rim.”
Williams first recruited Payne out of high school, but the big man chose to stay close to home. He looked for a change after two years with the Gophers that saw him averaging 10 points per game in 2023-24 and 8.2 in 2022-23.
Williams was the first coach to reach out on “the first day (the transfer portal) was open, the first morning,” according to Payne, and that just added to his excitement about joining a program he had passed over two years earlier.
Taylor wouldn’t let the opportunity pass the Aggies by again. He remembers watching Payne’s highlights in Williams’ office and texted him “We need you” as soon as he entered the portal.
Williams has reveled in the growth that Payne has made from the high schooler who hardly had college hoops on his radar. Now, he’s a large reason why Texas A&M will move into Saturday’s second-round matchup against either No. 5 Michigan or No. 12 UC San Diego.
“He’s as pure of a human being that’s his size in the country,” Williams said. “I met him going into his senior year when nobody was recruiting him. He is and was very unfamiliar with college athletics at this level. He’s never backed up. He’s never been resistant. He has yearned to continue to improve. We’ve been able to coach him with great intensity because he wants to be really good.”
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