Texas Tech basketball: Early-season surprises from rebuilt Red Raiders

Kyler Edwards hasn’t had to be a major offensive force

After losing six of last season’s top eight scorers, the Red Raiders could have come out of the gates somewhat sluggishly on offense.  After all, this is a team that is still learning how to play with each other, on both ends of the floor.

But so far, Tech is averaging a ridiculous 89 points per game.  That’s 16.9 more than last year’s team averaged and over 12 more that Beard saw his team average in its first three games in 2018, all of which also came against lesser opponents.

What surprises most about Tech’s fast offensive start has been the fact that sophomore Kyler Edwards has essentially been a secondary offensive contributor.  As one of only two players returning from the 8-man rotation that carried Tech to the final night of the season last year, Edwards was expected to be one of this year’s offensive leaders, along with fellow returner, Davide Moretti.

While Edwards is scoring more points per game this year (9.3 compared to 5.5), it’s interesting to note that his scoring increase is due entirely to an increase in playing time.  Starting this year after being a reserve as a freshman, Edwards is playing 25.7 minutes per game, a bump of 7.9 minutes on the floor from a season ago.

Last year, Edwards averaged 3.2 points per minute while this year, he’s averaging just 2.7.  That could be due to a change in mindset as he now feels like he has the opportunity to let the game come to him rather than coming off the bench and immediately looking for shots as he did last year (which is what Tech asked of him in his first go-round).

But if we would have been told that after three games, Tech’s second-leading returning scorer would be just fourth on the team in points per game, we might have feared that the offense would struggle.  That’s not been the case because freshman Jahmi’us Ramsey has been as advertised, if not better, and is leading the team with 19.0 points per game while grad transfer T.J. Holyfield is proving to be a much greater offensive force than anyone expected as he’s put up 18.7 p.p.g. (nearly six points more than he averaged in 2017-18, his last season of action).

The question is whether Edwards can remain a secondary scorer for this roster when it plays teams with a pulse.  Likely not.  His experience in the biggest of moments has to be invaluable and when the lights get a little brighter and the name on the opposing jerseys reads “Iowa”, “Louisville”, “Kansas”, or “Kentucky”, don’t be surprised to see Chris Beard rely on a player in Edwards, that he knows can get buckets against top competition.