Texas Tech basketball All-Decade Team: The shooting guards

First Team: Davide Moretti

Our first-team selection is one of the afore-mentioned players that is a bit of a hybrid point guard/shooting guard.  But make no mistake, when Davide Moretti’s career in Lubbock is over, we will remember him as one of the best pure shooters in the history of the program and the Big 12.

In 2018-19, he became the first player in Big 12 history to shoot at least 50% from the field, 40% from 3-point range, and 90% from the free-throw line.  That all added up to an average of 11.3 points per game, an increase of almost eight per game from his true freshman season.

It wasn’t just that he was a prolific shooter, it was that he had a fantastic knack for hitting timely shots.  Most notably was the pair of deep 3s he drained in the second half of Tech’s 75-69 Elite Eight victory over No. 1 seed Gonzaga.  With his family on hand to watch him for the first time as a collegiate, the Italian pushed his team to the program’s first Final Four.

A fan favorite, the 6-foot-3 guard has improved as much as any player we’ve seen in the last decade of Red Raider basketball.  As a freshman, he was inconsistent and often struggled with the physical nature of the Big 12 game.  He averaged only 3.5 points per game in 12 minutes of action and was held without a basket in nine conference games.

But by the time his sophomore season arrived, he was a different player.  More confident after putting on some much-needed muscle in the offseason, Moretti saw his minutes jump to 31.6 per game as he joined the starting lineup as a sophomore.  His scoring jumped to the point that he was second on the team behind Big 12 Player of the Year Jarrett Culver.

In the mold of Bonewitz and Jennings, Moretti is one of those players that forces opposing fans to throw the remote when he is left open because it sometimes seems as if a 3-pointer is as automatic as a layup for him.

This year, he is averaging 14.2 p.p.g. despite being the focal point of opposing defensive game plans, especially with freshman star Jahmi’us Ramsey missing the last three-plus games.  As the most experienced player on the team in regard to playing under Chris Beard, Moretti is now the team leader and the one who will be asked to come up big again in the clutch.  That’s something he’s already proven to do in the biggest of moments and should he continue to do that moving forward, he might find his way onto the next all-decade team as well.