Texas Tech basketball survives OT scare at home vs. Oklahoma State

Wednesday night, the Texas Tech basketball team pulled out an 84-80 OT win over Oklahoma State to pull into a first-place tie with Kansas State.

Big 12 logic should have told us that Wednesday’s matchup between a Texas Tech team coming off a 29-point win over Kansas and an Oklahoma State team coming off a 39-point loss to Kansas State would be a battle to the end. And thanks to Davide Moretti’s 20 points, the Red Raiders were able to avoid a huge upset at home to move into a tie atop the Big 12 standings with Kansas State.

Moretti was 12-12 from the free-throw line with ten of those coming in the final three-and-a-half minutes of the second half and overtime helping Tech survive a historic shooting night from the Cowboys. Oklahoma State hit a school record 17 shots from 3-point range including a dagger from guard Lindy Waters as time expired to send the game to overtime.

Waters was unconscious down the stretch hitting four 3’s in the final minute of regulation and one more in the final minute of the extra frame as part of a career-best 26-point performance. Overall, he was 9-18 from the field including an unbelievable 7-10 from behind the arc.

As a team, OSU shot 53.1% (17-32) from long-range to outscore the Red Raiders by 42 points from the 3-point line. The Red Raiders made just 3-19 (15.8%) from deep just one game after equalling a school record with 16 3-pointers Saturday against Kansas. It was the first time in the Red Raiders’ current six-game losing streak that the 3-ball failed virtually the entire roster as it did for stretches earlier in the season.

But Tech was able to withstand the OSU barrage by exploiting the undermanned Cowboys at the free throw line and in the paint. Tech held a 14-point advantage in points at the charity stripe (25-11) and a 28-point advantage in points in the paint.

However, the foul line was nearly the achilles’ heel for Chris Beard’s team. Outside of Moretti, Tech went just 13-20 (65.5%) at the line including a key stretch in the second half when the Red Raiders missed six-consecutive foul shots allowing the Cowboys to climb back into the game.

After taking a 10-point lead into intermission thanks to a workman-like first half effort, Tech became stagnant on offense in the second half as the ball rotation and off-ball player movement that had been so crisp during the previous five games were nowhere to be found. That, combined with incredible shooting from Waters and Thomas Dziagwa made the game far more dangerous than anyone in scarlet and black anticipated.

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Hitting 6-9 shots from deep, Dzigawa scored 20 points and helped keep the Cowboys within striking distance until Waters caught fire. Fortunately for the Red Raiders, OSU’s leading scorer, Cameron McGriff (12.5 points per game) had only eight points as he struggled from the field going just 2-11.

As for the Red Raiders, their leading scorer was also not at his best. Coming off of a 26-point performance against Kansas, the reigning Big 12 Player of the Week Jarrett Culver managed to score 19 points but he was just 7-22 from the field.

Senior forward Tariq Owens added 16 points and six rebounds to help offset a poor night from Matt Mooney who scored just six points on 3-11 from the field. Mooney was 0-4 from deep after making 11 of his previous 17 attempts from distance. But two of Mooney’s three field goals came on back-to-back possessions in the final 90 seconds of OT helping Tech maintain a one-possession advantage.

Though most will look at an OT win over a team that entered with just a 3-11 record in Big 12 play as a poor showing, the silver lining is that the Red Raiders were able to avoid the preverbal trap game. We have seen other Texas Tech teams lose similar games so many times over the years that most of us expected Wednesday night to be another in the long line of “typical Tech” performances that fans have come to lament.

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Thankfully, that did not happen again as Tech was able to pull even with Kansas State and stay a game ahead of Kansas in the Big 12 race with just three games to play. Though the Red Raiders have been an offensive juggernaut in recent weeks, at its core, this remains a gritty team that wins on testicular fortitude as much as on basketball acumen. And never was that more evident than on Wednesday night when not even a historic shooting night from Oklahoma State was enough to knock off Texas Tech.

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