Texas Tech basketball: Red Raiders rediscovering touch from 3-point range

After struggling as a team from 3-point range for most of December, the Texas Tech basketball team appears to be heating up from behind the arc.

The ebbs and flows of a season are one of the most fun aspects to analyze, especially when your team is on the rise. One area where the Texas Tech basketball team’s tide appears to be coming in is in regards to what is happening from behind the arc.

In the Red Raiders’ last two games, they have shot 18-41 (43.9%)from deep. What’s more, in both the win over Cal State Bakersfield and in Saturday’s win against Oklahoma State, Tech made nine shots from long distance.

That’s a promising sign given the struggles the team had when shooting from deep for most of December. In the first four games of last month, Tech was a combined 22-83 (26.5%).

That included a 7-27 showing in the win over No. 1 Louisville and a 5-22 effort in the next game, an uninspiring victory over the Southern Miss Golden Eagles at home. And when Tech shot 4-16 from deep against UT Rio Grande Valley five days later, fans began to grow concerned.

What made the team’s struggles from 3-point range so magnified was the fact that the two players we all expected to be reliable options from deep, Kyler Edwards and Davide Moretti, couldn’t find the range as well, making the rest of the team’s struggles all the more exaggerated.

Over a 6-game span starting with the Iowa game on Thanksgiving night, Moretti shot just 12-44 (27.2%) in the area of that game that has been his greatest strength for virtually his entire career. Meanwhile, Edwards was in an even more prolonged slump.

After making three shots from deep against Houston Baptist in the season’s third game, the sophomore went eight games before making three long-distance attempts against Cal Bakersfield. During that time, he was just 9-43 (20.9%).

The good news is that in the last two games, that duo has been a combined 7-19 (36.8%) from 3-point range. That includes 4-8 from Moretti. Unfortunately, Edwards was 0-5 against Oklahoma State after hitting 3-6 in the previous game.

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Another factor that has helped Tech’s long-distance shooting has been the return of Jahmi’us Ramsey, who has surprisingly been this team’s best outside shooter at 47.9% (unless one counts the 60% Aery Benson has shot on his 10 attempts). That’s not something he was known for as a high school recruit.

Keep in mind that the true freshman was absent for much of December as he missed four-and-a-half games with a hamstring injury sustained against Iowa in Las Vegas furthering Tech’s struggles from 3-point range. Since his return, he’s nailed 10-18 (55.5%) 3-pointers including 8-11 in his last two games.

He was a huge weapon from deep against the Cowboys on Saturday as he went 4-7 from deep. What’s more, his 3-pointers against the Cowboys seemed to come at critical moments. And when combined with some bonus long-range makes, it made the Red Raider offense unstoppable.

Senior forward T.J. Holyfield gave his team a lift by making two of his three first-half 3-pointers against the Cowboys. That was the first time in his Red Raider career that he’s had multiple 3s in a game.

For his career, he’s been a selective outside shooter who has never averaged more than 1.9 looks from deep in a season. This year, he’s taken just 16 and hit five.

But just consider what it will do for this team if Holyfield can make enough deep shots to make opposing teams respect his ability to hit from outside the lane. He doesn’t have to shoot it as well as Ramsey or Moretti but just consistently making a couple of jumpers per game will draw opposing big men away from the basket on the defensive end thus opening up the driving lanes for players like Terrence Shannon and Chris Clarke.

This recent uptick in shooting by the Texas Tech basketball team has lifted the Red Raiders to 4th in the Big 12 in 3-point percentage at 33.7%. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing that the 3-pointer is what this team needs to live and die by.

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Rather, keep an eye on how Moretti, Ramsey, and Edwards shoot each time out because if at least two of them are on their game and Chris Beard gets some bonus 3s from Holyfield or reserves like Andrei Savrasov and Avery Benson, it will be more than enough to carry Tech to some wins. That’s the formula that we saw on display Saturday when the Red Raiders crushed Oklahoma State and if it continues, there may be plenty more opponents that are unable to slow down the Red Raider offense.

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