Quenton Jackson scored 18 points, Henry Coleman added 16 and Manny Obaseki 14 as Texas A&M rode a second half offensive explosion to a 72-56 win over Washington State in the NIT Semifinal at Madison Square Garden Tuesday night. The Aggies (27-12) will face Xavier for the NIT championship Thursday night.

Both the Aggies and Cougars (22-15) started off slowly on offense, with the score tied at 12 midway through the first half. Jackson and Tyrese Radford then scored A&M's next 12 points as the Aggies realized they could split Washington State's zone defense and get to the rim at will.

The Aggies were up 24-15 with 5 minutes to go in the half, then pushed the lead out to 11 when New York native Hassan Diarra hit a driving layup to put A&M up 32-21 with 2:03 to go in the half. The Cougars would finish the half on a 5-0 run to cut the score to 32-26, but the Aggies had found something on offense that would carry over into the second half.

Coleman had just two points at halftime after picking up a pair of fouls, but exploded out of the gate in the second half. Easily getting into position in the low post, he scored A&M's first 6 points of the second stanza on dunks. Jackson chipped in a pair of lightly contested layups and Obaseki hit one of his highlight reel hanging jump shots to push the Aggie lead back out to 11 with 16:10 left.

A 4-point play by Diarra after he was fouled on a rare made 3-pointer pushed the lead out to 15 with 15:12 to go, and the Obaseki took over. The former 5-star freshman showed scoring ability A&M fans have been waiting for, hitting extremely difficult shots and hanging in the air as he waited for defenders to clear. He would score 8 of his 14 points in less than 4 minutes as the Aggies pushed their lead out to 23.

While A&M was getting virtually any shot they wanted, Washington State found it impossible to deal with the swarming Aggie defense. A&M held the Cougars to 34.5% shooting from the field, including 24.5% from 3-point range, and forced 17 turnovers. When Washington State had a chance to cut into the Aggie lead at the free throw line, they failed there too -- the Cougars were just 11-20 from the charity stripe.

In spite of hitting just 2 of 14 3-point attempts and 6 of 13 free throws, the Aggies still hit more than 48% of their shots as they repeatedly attacked the basket for high percentage shots. A&M would push their lead out to as much as 27 points before relaxing with about 4 minutes to go in the game, making the final score seem closer than the matchup really was. .