The Texas Tech basketball team is in an odd place, the midst of a losing streak, but it is far too early for us to panic.
We’ve been spoiled by the Texas Tech basketball team over the past three years. Going a combined 33-3 in the portion of the schedule that precedes the beginning of Big 12 play during the start of the Chris Beard era, perhaps the Red Raiders gave us a sense that life in the first two months of the college basketball season was supposed to be relatively easy.
This year, we are being reminded that no game should be taken for granted. Already, Tech has lost three games this season and given that No. 1 Louisville is next on the schedule, it appears as if a 4-game slide could be in the works. But even after a disappointing 65-60 OT loss to DePaul on Wednesday, there’s no time to panic.
Though the Chris Beard era has been fantastic, every one of his seasons in Lubbock has had at least one frustrating slide. That’s something that should remind all of us that no season is without its struggles.
In 2016-17, the Red Raiders had a 3-game losing streak in late February as part of a 1-5 finish to the season. In that trio of losses, Tech fell at No. 9 West Virginia in double OT, to Iowa State in OT at home, and at Oklahoma State. Much like this year’s squad, the first edition of the Beard Red Raiders struggled to make plays in close games as they lost six games by four points or less.
The next year, Tech reached the Elite 8 for the first time but only after another February swoon. Much like this year’s slide, that season’s season-long four-game skid came as a result of an injury to the team’s leading scorer. When Keenan Evans broke his toe in a loss at Baylor, Tech struggled to adjust to life without him and it resulted in losses to Oklahoma State, Kansas, and West Virginia. (Though Evans tried to play against Kansas, he was a shell of his former self).
Of course, last year saw Tech take another couple of steps in the NCAA Tournament and reach the title game. But that didn’t seem likely when the team went through an abysmal 3-game slide in January.
After starting conference play 4-0, the Red Raiders dropped games to Iowa State, Baylor, and Kansas State with the last two of those being on the road. During that funk, Tech averaged just 57 points per game (which included a 45-point clunker against Kansas State) as it seemed like no one but Jarrett Culver could put the ball in the bucket.
As we all know, Tech broke out of that malaize to eventually finish the season going 12-2 in the last 14 games including a 9-game winning streak that helped them claim a share of the conference regular-season title. Thus the lesson, the good teams get better in February and March.
This season was never supposed to be about November and December. Do these games matter? Certainly. They will go quite a way towards determining NCAA seeding.
But a 3-game skid does not end a college basketball team’s title hopes the way a similar streak would kill a football team’s chances at making it to the exclusive 4-team playoff. Fortunately, college basketball has a big 68-team tournament at the end of the year and there is plenty of time for this team to earn a spot in that event.
So we must put aside our football mindset, the one that tells us to panic or overreact after every game. When we do, we will see that there are plenty of reasons to believe that the sky is not falling on this Texas Tech basketball team.