Texas Tech basketball: The top games of Matt Mooney’s Red Raider career

Mooney takes over as Tech ends losing streak in Austin

Looking back at the 2018-19 season, there’s no doubt that we will forever remember it as the year the Red Raiders made program history.  And the first of the season’s historic wins came in January when the Red Raiders ended a 22-game losing streak in Austin by beating the Longhorns, 68-62.

Drilling 8-10 shots, including all three of his 3-point attempts, Mooney was the star of the game with 22 points.  In addition, he grabbed five rebounds, dished out two assists, and came up with two steals to help Tech move to 4-0 in Big 12 play for the first time ever.

Mooney needed to be at another level that day because the Horns were able to keep Culver in check by holding him to just 13 points on 6-11 shooting.  What’s more, the Red Raider rotation was down to just seven players after reserve forward Deshawn Corprew strained his calf just four minutes into the game.

Playing a team-high 37 minutes, Mooney absolutely took over in the second half.  With 14 points in the final twenty minutes, Mooney took over the alpha dog role for the first time as a Red Raider and carried Tech to a key early-season conference win.

Coming out of the locker room, he nailed two 3s in the first two minutes to erase a 4-point deficit and give Tech the lead 32-30.  On the day, he accounted for three of Tech’s seven makes from downtown.

Shortly thereafter, his layup put Tech back in front 36-35.  Moments later, he made another layup and drilled a jumper on back-to-back possessions to stake his team to a 46-41 lead with just under eleven minutes to play.

Then, with Tech leading by six points in the final minute, Mooney sank two free throws to give the Red Raiders a three-possession lead at 65-57 essentially putting to bed any idea of a UT comeback.

When you factor in that he assisted on two other key buckets in the second half, a Culver layup and a Moretti 3, Mooney had a hand in 19 of Tech’s 42 second-half points.   It was a masterful performance from the grad transfer who was coming off a quiet seven-point showing against Oklahoma four days earlier.

Early in Big 12 play, the biggest question surrounding the Red Raiders was whether there were enough playmakers around Culver for Beard’s team to be a serious threat.  Though he had already had double-digit scoring performance in two of his first three conference games, Matt Mooney showed for the first time in Austin that he was more than capable of taking over in the clutch, something that we saw again in Minneapolis.