It's difficult to say the road has been unkind to the Texas A&M men's basketball team.

They haven't been on it enough.

One loss in one true road game to a ranked team does not qualify as having trouble away from home.

But that's a glass-half-full approach, because the Ags are still 0-1.

That will soon change, one way or the other, with road games at Lubbock and Manhattan, Kan., in the next four days.

"I heard they don't like us," first-year A&M coach Mark Turgeon said of what it would be like playing at Texas Tech.

You heard right, coach, but you've seen worse, or at least as bad, during your playing and coaching career.

So have Joseph Jones, Dominique Kirk, Josh Carter and the four sophomores that will likely see anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes of playing time on Wednesday against Texas Tech.

So, despite the fact that the No. 10 Aggies have been settled in the cozy confines of their own gym for 45 straight days (eight games), don't look for them to wilt because they won't get to warm up to their own electric-light show.

Turgeon said he's confident his team will respond well because they have a toughness about them. He also believed they played well at Arizona for all but 10 minutes.

He's right on both accounts, but the second one is what should alarm him.

Avoiding bad 10-minute spans are what make or break a team playing on the road. That's what the home team thrives on, playing relatively even for three quarters of the game and then putting together a run that the five visiting players alone on the court can't stop.

That's what happened in Tucson.

But there's more to playing on the road than overcoming a loud gym. There is the travel, the unfamiliar beds and the unfamiliar shooting backgrounds.

That's what A&M can lean on, having taken care of business in a setting as unfamiliar as possible for a bunch of Texans.

Winning the Preseason NIT in convincing style, with wins in New York over Washington and Ohio State, should give the Aggies the confidence to win on the road, a must if they are to make a run at the Big 12 title.

Results aside, A&M is built for the road. Along with being a tough and somewhat seasoned team, they have two components that come into play on any court -- defense and depth.

Defense, with the exception of the Colorado game, has continued to be a strength. A&M holds opponents to 37 percent shooting from the field, which is only two percent higher than last year's team after nonconference play.

And Turgeon has developed a bench and, perhaps more importantly, a nice rotation of eight players.

Seven players average at least 20 minutes, and all seven average at least 7 points a game. Nobody else in the Big 12 can match that. Throw in Chinemelu Elonu, and the Aggies have eight players that average three rebounds a game.

So the road to the Big 12 championship may not go through Lubbock, but it does start there for the Aggies. And if they are to make the final game of the regular season against Kansas mean more than an opportunity for a quality win to boost their RPI, a sweep against Texas Tech and Kansas State would go a long way. A spilt is almost mandatory.

• Richard Croome's e-mail address is richard.croome@theeagle.com.