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Texas Tech basketball: Top 5 individual performances of 2018-19

By Matthew Conner

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - APRIL 06: Matt Mooney #13 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders reacts in the second half against the Michigan State Spartans during the 2019 NCAA Final Four semifinal at U.S. Bank Stadium on April 6, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - APRIL 06: Matt Mooney #13 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders reacts in the second half against the Michigan State Spartans during the 2019 NCAA Final Four semifinal at U.S. Bank Stadium on April 6, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
(Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /

The Texas Tech basketball team’s amazing run to the National Title Game was filled with some incredible individual performances.  Here are the top five.

What made this year’s Texas Tech basketball team so intriguing and easy to root for was the way that the Red Raiders came together as a team.  Certainly, Chris Beard was able to get his squad to gel in a way that yielded results far greater than what anyone would have expected given the collection of individual talent on the roster.

But though basketball is technically a team sport, it is a team sport that is driven by individual performances.  While every team must find a way to play together, regardless of the sport, basketball is unique in that individuals can have a greater impact on the hardwood than in almost any other sport.

With only five players on the court, each individual member of a basketball team is more critical than in say football, where there are eleven players on the field together.  And as such, basketball games are often decided by individual performances.

Whereas in football, a quarterback can’t win a game by himself because he can’t play defense (just ask Patrick Mahomes) or in baseball where a pitcher can’t win the game without the help of his team’s hitters, in basketball, one player can take over a game and carry his team to victory.  We have seen that happen repeatedly in the NBA where individual stars such as Michael Jordan, Dirk  Nowitzki, LeBron James and others have virtually single-handedly led teams to titles.

And though this year’s Texas Tech basketball team was a tight-knit team that played together as well as any team in program history, there were times when individual players had to step up and put the team on their shoulders.  Here are the top five individual performances of what was the most successful season in Red Raider history.

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