Saturday, the Texas Tech basketball team beaut TCU 81-66 in Ft. Worth for its seventh-straight win thanks to a big run in each half.
The Texas Tech basketball team remains the hottest team in the Big 12 following its 81-66 win over TCU Saturday in Ft. Worth. And in front of a crowd that was nearly half Red Raiders, the team that has run off seven-consecutive wins in Big 12 play used two huge runs to put away the Frogs.
Jarrett Culver and Davide Moretti both led the way with 15 points while Deshawn Corprew and Tariq Owens each scored 12 to lead a balanced offensive attack. Overall, Tech shot a blistering 56.9% from the floor and 87.5% from the free throw line in eclipsing the 80-point mark for the fourth-consecutive game.
Up 11-9 at the 13:34 mark of the first half, Chris Beard’s team went on a 22-2 run over the next eight minutes to claim a 33-11 lead. During that onslaught, the Red Raiders hit 10 of 13 shots from the field while TCU missed nine-consecutive.
And though the run featured fantastic ball movement and hot shooting, Tech was also solid defensively. The Red Raiders forced seven turnovers in the stretch that ultimately came to define the game as it allowed Tech to build a 43-25 lead at the break.
But after halftime, TCU went on a 14-3 run of its own to pull to within seven points at 46-39. Fortunately, that would be as close as Jamie Dixon’s team would come to mounting a comeback.
Tech quickly answered with another run sparked by an unexpected catalyst. When Corprew nailed a 3-pointer and tipped home an offensive rebound, Tech was able to regain its double-digit lead and douse any thoughts of a comeback that the Horned Frogs were entertaining. A Matt Mooney 3-pointer would then push Tech’s advantage back up to 15 points leading to a 15-6 run that put the Red Raiders up 61-45 and made the final ten minutes of the game anticlimactic.
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While big runs helped Tech pull away, the biggest advantage the Red Raiders had came from the bench. Corprew, Brandone Francis and Kyler Edwards combined to score 24 points while the two TCU reserves that saw the court failed to register a single point in 25 combined minutes of action.
For Corprew, his dozen points were a season high in conference play and the most he has scored since putting up 13 against UT-Rio Grande Valley on December 28th. During Tech’s winning streak, he’s averaging 7.5 points per game, up from the 2.6 he put up in his previous nine outings.
Three Frogs did hit double-digits with J.D. Miller leading the way with 18. Prior to the game, I said that Tech needed to keep the senior forward in check and though he was the game’s leading scorer, he had little impact on Saturday. In fact, ten of his points came in the final 10:40 of the game after Tech had already taken an insurmountable 15-point lead. And had he not hit three 3-pointers in the final two minutes of garbage time, he would have failed to reach double-digits.
As a team, TCU shot just 38.7% from the field and 9-25 (36%) from deep. It was an encouraging return to form for a Texas Tech defense that was torched by Oklahoma State Wednesday night to the tune of 17 3-pointers.
The win helped keep the Red Raiders in a first-place tie with Kansas State with just two games remaining. Tech hosts Texas on Monday for the home finale before traveling to Iowa State Saturday. Meanwhile, after beating Baylor at home on Saturday, KSU travels to Ft. Worth on Monday before hosting Oklahoma on the regular season’s final day.
But regardless of what happens with the Big 12 race, Tech has already guaranteed itself one of the most successful Big 12 seasons in its program history. In addition to already posting the program’s longest ever Big 12 winning streak, the Red Raiders have secured their most ever Big 12 wins in a season (12) and guaranteed themselves a winning record in conference road games.
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But that is not likely to satisfy Chris Beard and his team. Tech has not won a conference title since 1996, the final season of the Southwest Conference. But with two more wins, that streak will come to an end. And if the Red Raiders continue to play as well in the next two games as they have over the previous seven, it will be very hard for anyone to stop them.