Texas Tech basketball: Why the Red Raiders lost to West Virginia

Jahmi’us Ramsey had the worst game of his Tech career thus far

To win games against top 25 teams on the road, your stars have to come up big the way Jarrett Culver did last year in Morgantown.  That’s not what true freshman Jahmi’us Ramsey was able to do Saturday.

In fact, the true freshman had his worst game of the year to this point.

With just eight points on 3-15 shooting, he was held to single digits for just the second time this year.  What’s more, the only other time he didn’t get to ten points was on Thanksgiving night when he left the Iowa game early in the second half, not to return, with a hamstring injury.

This was the second-straight game in which Ramsey struggled to finish at the rim.  But unlike against Baylor, when he hit 5-10 shots from deep, his outside shot let him down in this game.

Just 1-4 from behind the arc, he had just his fourth game of the year in which he didn’t hit at least two 3-pointers.  The long ball has become his main weapon on the year so when he was unable to connect on Saturday, it looked like he was out of sorts in the other areas of his game.

Ramsey got to the line just once, didn’t have an assist, and turned the ball over twice.  And though it doesn’t show up on the stat sheet, he often stumbled or fell off balance when attempting to drive the ball thus disrupting his flow and the flow of the offense as a whole.

Shooting just 20% from the field, this was his worst effort of the year in that aspect and he missed a couple of easy layups around the rim.  It put an end to a nice run he had to open Big 12 play when he averaged 19 points per game against Oklahoma State and Baylor.

Every player is going to have off nights.  Ramsey is no different.  And the blame for this loss doesn’t fall at his feet only.  But this was a night when Tech needed its star to live up to that reputation and he was unable to do so.