After a "Dallas Morning News" article profiled Kavaliauskas, mentioning that he had only seen his mother twice since he moved to the USA, many Texas A&M fans inquired about raising money to reunite the family temporarily. Texas A&M discovered that the NCAA-financed Student-Athlete Opportunity Fund could be used, and paid for Birute Kavaliauskiene to travel to the US for the first time to see her son play in his last home game for A&M. In the Aggies' 94–78 win over Missouri, Kavaliauskas, whose mother traveled all the way from Lithuania to see him play, scored a career-high 26 points on 11-of-12 shooting. The win assured the Aggies of a second-place finish in the Big 12 regular season, the highest the team has ever finished in this conference.