The Texas Tech basketball team narrowly avoided an upset Wednesday night in an 84-80 overtime win in Lubbock. Let’s take a look at why the Red Raiders came so close to disaster.
Every team is going to have close calls during a season. The difference between average teams and great teams lies in the ability to prevail when you don’t have your “A” game and that is what the Texas Tech basketball team did Wednesday against Oklahoma State, which entered the game as a 17-point underdog.
Coming off a 29-point win over Kansas, many wondered if the Red Raiders would suffer a let down against the ninth-place team in the league. But despite playing an uninspiring first half, Tech still took a 10-point lead into the locker room making the near upset so strange.
In most huge upsets, the underdog usually bolts from the gate quickly to put the favorite in an early hole while building its own confidence. But Tech was able to built as much as a 41-27 lead in the first two minutes of the second half.
After an OSU timeout, the Cowboys seemed to regroup while Tech suffered and uncharacteristic loss of intensity. For most of the second half, Chris Beard’s team seemed content to just play with its food allowing the Cowboys to quickly pull to within six points at the 12:58 mark and when the underdogs took a one-point lead at 59-58 on a 3-pointer by walk-on Dee Mitchell, heart rates across West Texas spiked.
Still, we must give the Red Raiders credit for finding a way to win. This team absorbed Oklahoma State’s best shot and still came out on top. Eventually, this game may turn out to be a an important moment in the season by helping humble a team that was living large on the back of a five game winning streak.
Tech had been playing like the best team in the nation for nearly a month so the odds suggested that a clunker was likely at some point down the stretch. And that clunker came against the perfect opponent.
Had Tech played this poorly against any of the three remaining regular season opponents (TCU, Texas and Iowa State), the Red Raiders would have lost. But an OSU team that was down to seven scholarship players could not make the Red Raiders pay.
Now the Tech must take the lessons learned on Wednesday night and learn from them. Let’s take a look at three reasons Tech nearly saw their Big 12 title hopes dashed by the most unlikely of opponents.