Texas Tech basketball: Critical moments in Tuesday’s victory at KSU

Kevin McCuller saves the day by doing the dirty work

There’s no way to put it kindly.  Kevin McCullar is an atrocious outside shooter.  It is rare for Red Raider fans to cringe every time a guard shoots a jumper but that’s what we do when the redshirt freshman lets fly from outside the paint.

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But there are other aspects of the game and he’s proving to be rather adept at those.  And by doing the dirty work in a key stretch of the second half, he seized the momentum for his team and pushed the Red Raiders ahead for good.

With the game knotted at 48-all, McCullar sank one of two free throws to put Tech up for good.  But it was his next two buckets that are the moments that we will remember as those when this game was won.

At 10:51 to play, he muscled up an offensive rebound and drew a foul for an and-1, which he converted.  That gave his team a 52-48 lead.

After an Edwards 3-ball pushed the lead to 55-48, McCullar drove to the rim and twice tipped the ball on goal before finally tipping it home.  Putting his team ahead by nine points by battling on the boards the way we rarely see young guards do, the San Antonio native sparked his team and KSU would never threaten again.

It is safe to say that McCullar’s work over the last two games (6 points at West Virginia) has helped him stake his claim as this team’s 7th option and second-best player off the bench behind Chris Clarke.  What’s important to remember is that he’s also been playing extra minutes in the last two games with starter Terrence Shannon out of the lineup and Clarke having moved to the starting five.

It is hard to imagine that this team can do what we all hope it can and contend for a national title with just a six-man rotation such as Beard played in the loss to Baylor.  In that game, McCullar saw only three minutes of action.  But since then, he’s emerged as a useful piece of the puzzle and his 5-point outburst in the second half on Tuesday was the most important moment of the game.