Texas Tech basketball: Why the Red Raiders lost to Iowa

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Jahmi’us Ramsey #3 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders is guarded by Connor McCaffery #30 of the Iowa Hawkeyes (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) /

Poor movement on offense

What surprised me most about this game was that Iowa was able to take Tech out of its offensive game. This Hawkeye team is not a great defensive team by any means as it came into the game allowing over ten points per game more than Tech and ranking just 130th in defensive efficiency.

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But the Red Raiders just could not figure out how to manufacture points when their outside shots would not fall. It was troubling to see Tech fail to drive the ball to the rim against an Iowa team that is not nearly as athletic as others the Red Raiders will face.

After all, we have already seen the Hawkeyes exposed defensively by another athletic team, DePaul. In the second game of the year, the Blue Demons shot 61.4% overall on their way to a 93-78 win in Iowa City.

But Tech couldn’t expose the Hawkeyes that way. T.J. Holyfield couldn’t hit shots from outside to draw Garza away from the rim and he was able to be a large impediment to the Red Raiders’ slashing guards when they did decide to drive the ball.

Prior to this game, Tech was tied with Dayton for the NCAA lead with 22 assists per game. But against Iowa, the Red Raiders managed only 12, which included five from Chris Clarke, who was the Red Raiders’ best player.

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There just didn’t seem to be much movement on offense, which is a rather important component of the motion offense. Tech will need to get back to being a drive-first, quick-passing team on offense if they are going to be able to put up points this year, especially when the shots aren’t dropping from outside.

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