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Texas Tech basketball: Why the Red Raiders lost to No. 4 Baylor

By Matthew Conner

LUBBOCK, TEXAS - JANUARY 07: Guard Terrence Shannon Jr. #1 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders dunks the ball during the second half of the college basketball game against the Baylor Bears on January 07, 2020 at United Supermarkets Arena in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
LUBBOCK, TEXAS - JANUARY 07: Guard Terrence Shannon Jr. #1 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders dunks the ball during the second half of the college basketball game against the Baylor Bears on January 07, 2020 at United Supermarkets Arena in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images) /
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Forward Tristan Clark #25 of the Baylor Bears s (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
Forward Tristan Clark #25 of the Baylor Bears s (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images) /

The Red Raiders were crushed on the glass

The area of the game that Baylor did have the greatest impact on was the rebounding edge the Bears owned.  Despite being no taller than the Red Raiders across the board, Scott Drew’s team was tenacious on the glass and took the fight to the home team.

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Tech was outrebounded 44-25 as no Red Raider had more than seven boards while two Bears got to double-digits.  Guard Mark Vital led all players with 13 and forward Freddie Gillespie had 10.  Together, that duo had just two fewer rebounds than the entire Red Raider team.

Most damning to Tech was the fact that 17 of Baylor’s rebounds were on the offensive end of the floor.  That led to 14 second-chance points.

The Baylor offensive attack was rather simple.  Knowing that they could get offensive boards at will, the plan was simply to have guard Davion Mitchell penetrate and pitch to a 3-point shooter or chuck up a runner in the paint knowing that an offensive rebound was likely to follow any miss.

The Red Raiders just can’t think they are going to beat a top-5 team by being outrebounded by 18 boards in total and seven on the offensive glass.  That’s a concern given that they now head to West Virginia on Saturday.

Grabbing 42 boards per game, WVU leads the Big 12.  They also lead the conference with a rebounding margin of +7.2 per game.

Tech has to have it’s guards be more of a factor on the glass than we saw Tuesday.  That includes leading rebounder Chris Clarke, who had just 5 boards, almost four less than he was averaging before this contest.

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Tech isn’t going to ever have a size advantage in the post so the guards will continue to be critical in the rebounding game.  That’s where Baylor took the Red Raiders to the woodshed and that’s got to be something that Beard has to address before heading to Morgantown.

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