Counting down the top 10 Texas Tech sports moments of 2019

No. 5: Winning Big 12 basketball title

When the school’s first-ever Big 12 men’s basketball title is just the No. 5 moment of the year, that says quite a bit about what we saw over the last 12 months.

On March 9th, the Red Raiders took their 8-game winning streak into Ames, Iowa needing one more win to guarantee a share of the conference crown.  The problem was that the program had won just four times at Hilton Coliseum in its history and the Cyclones had already beaten the Red Raiders in Lubbock back in January.

But behind a career-high 31 points from Jarrett Culver, Tech took home an 80-73 win to bring a trophy home from the heartland.  It wasn’t easy though.

Tech fell behind 8-0 to open the game and trailed by two points at the break.  But thanks to Culver’s heroics down the stretch and Davide Moretti’s 20 points, they were able to overwhelm the Cyclones in the second half.

Two important stats that helped secure this win were free throws and turnovers.  Despite playing in a notoriously hostile environment, Tech was 13-13 at the line and turned the ball over 9 times while forcing 14 from the home team.

"“I’ve been fortunate in my career to coach a lot of great players so we have some nets around,” Beard said, “but this one is special because of building the program and these seniors staying the course. We had great contributions and this may be the most unselfish team I’ve ever coached. We don’t shy away from being connected and how we play for each other. I’m going to give a piece of this net to last year’s seniors and some other people around Tech who have played a huge role in this.”"