Texas Tech basketball all-decade team: The power forwards
1st team: Norense Odiase
It’s impossible to quantify what Norense Odiase meant to the Texas Tech basketball program. An old school power forward playing in the modern age of the game, he went from a pudgy 300-pound freshman to a brick wall as a senior who along the way was the heart and soul of the era that saw Texas Tech program reach never-before-seen heights.
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The numbers aren’t really the story. He averaged only 5.4 points and 4.6 assists in 128 career games. His best year statistically was in 2015-16 when as a sophomore, he had 8.4 points and 4.2 boards per contest.
But a foot injury cost him all but three games in 2016-17, Chris Beard’s first season in Lubbock. And given the way the new head coach wanted positionless players, it seemed like Odiase might not be a great fit leading some to believe that he might transfer.
Fortunately, he hung around for his last two years and along the way became his team’s leader. When Odiase spoke, which wasn’t often, his teammates listened. As he did, they did, all the way to last season’s national title game.
But it isn’t as if he was useless on the court. He developed into one of the best defensive players on the team and his incredibly upper-body strength allowed him to play bigger than his 6-foot-8 measurement.
dark. Next. The all-decade point guards
In the history of Texas Tech basketball, Norense Odiase’s career might not get more than a sentence or two. But all of us who watched him lead his team to the grandest of stages in the game, he will be one of the more unforgettable players to ever don the Double-T.