Texas Tech basketball: Red Raiders face Houston Baptist in Midland

The Texas Tech basketball team will take on Houston Baptist Wednesday night in Midland looking to move to 3-0 on the season.

Every time Chris Beard speaks about an opponent, he talks about how he respects them as a team and says something along the manner of how his team will have to play at its best to beat said opponent, regardless of whether that opponent is a Big 12 rival, a top 10 team, or a low-major squad. And when Beard uses his usual rhetoric, most Texas Tech basketball fans roll their eyes and pass it off as nothing more than coach speak.

Then Tuesday night happened and we were reminded that Beard might just know a little bit more than we do. No. 1 Kentucky’s 67-64 home loss to unranked Evansville sent shockwaves throughout the nation and served as a reminder why teams built around freshmen must always be on guard.

Certainly, some of those shockwaves were felt in West Texas where the nation’s newest college basketball power, Texas Tech, is in a position similar to Kentucky in that the Red Raiders are relying on seven freshmen to play key roles for what is presumed to be a national title contender. But in the modern world of the sport when freshmen shape the landscape of the game like never before, even the most talented of teams are vulnerable every night.

There’s no doubt that Kentucky’s loss has been mentioned a time or two by Beard has he prepares his team to face Houston Baptist at 7 pm Tuesday night in Midland. That’s because at first glance, this might be even more of a mismatch on paper than the Evansville / Kentucky game was supposed to be.

The No. 11 Red Raiders enter 2-0 with an average margin of victory thus far of 30 points per game. Meanwhile, HBU is 0-2 on the year with losses to Tulsa and Oral Roberts already scarring their ledger.

What’s more, this is a game that sees two programs heading in opposite directions come together. We all know that the Red Raiders are coming off the first National Title Game appearance in program history as well as a share of the regular season Big 12 title. But on the other hand, the Huskies were just 12-18 last year and 8-10 in the Southland Conference.

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There’s no reason to believe that this game should be anything more than another pleasure hunt for the Red Raiders. But that’s what Kentucky thought on Tuesday…and they lost…at home.

Sure, the crowd in Midland, where Tech has not played a game since 1951, will be decidedly pro-Red Raider, but this will be the first time that Tech’s seven freshmen will have played a college basketball game outside of their home arena. Hopefully, the experience of this summer’s 3-game exhibition tour of the Bahamas will pay dividends tonight in that it will have shown this young roster how life away from home may look. This team also played an exhibition in El Paso last month in front of an actual crowd as part of a charity event to benefit victims of August’s mass-shooting so they’ve been in unfriendly or unusual situations before.

Still, we will have to forgive Beard and his coaching staff for breathing a bit more heavily tonight. As the country learned on Tuesday, there’s just no way of knowing exactly what we can expect from freshmen. Hopefully, the veterans on this team will step forward and lead the team to a win so that the Red Raiders can avoid the same fate that Kentucky suffered when they were stunned by a team that no one thought belonged on the court with them.

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Broadcast info: The only television for tonight’s game will be streamed at TexasTech.tv where you can purchase the game for a one-time $7 payment. The radio broadcast will be available on the Texas Tech Sports Network as well as the Tune-In Radion App.

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