Texas Tech basketball: 3-headed scoring monster starting to emerge

With Kyler Edwards having scored at least 22 points in each of his last two games, the Texas Tech basketball team is starting to see a 3-headed scoring monster emerge at just the right time.

In life, it’s always preferable to have options. That’s why the emergence of Kyler Edwards over the last two games could be so critical for the Texas Tech basketball team this season.

Averaging 23 points against Kansas State and Iowa State, the sophomore is finally putting together the type of streak that we’ve been waiting for all year. Now, the Red Raiders have a legitimate three-headed scoring attack to give opposing teams fits.

Up to 12 points per game now, Edwards has joined Jahmi’us Ramsey (15.5 p.p.g.) and Davide Moretti (13.3 p.p.g.) to help the Red Raiders establish a 3-guard combination that is going to be rather tricky to defend moving forward. That’s critical for a number of reasons.

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First of all, Edwards is making teams pay for paying extra attention to and throwing their best defenders at the freshman Ramsey. As Big 12 play has progressed, it’s become obvious that teams are shading their defenses towards Ramsey and making certain to throw extra defenders at him, especially in the paint.

Therefore, Edwards has found himself in more one-on-one situations and he’s taken advantage. Now, opposing teams must decide whether they are going to try to focus on Edwards or Ramsey but it is nearly impossible for them to give extra help to both.

Another huge benefit of Edward’s hot streak is that this gives Tech a third 3-point weapon. With Moretti, Ramsey, and Edwards all striking fear in coaches from behind the arc again, Tech can spread the floor and have a deadly spot-up shooter on either wing.

The benefits of that are two-fold. Obviously, the greater the number of reliable 3-point shooters a team has on the floor, the more it helps the perimeter players get open looks. But it also helps draw the defense out of the paint thus making it easier for players like T.J. Holyfield or Terrence Shannon Jr. to go to work around the basket.

What’s more, a three-pronged attack from the guard position is going to help prevent teams from being derailed by a random cold-shooting night. We saw in the recent two-game Red Raider skid how having just one guard that is one his game just isn’t enough to beat good teams.

Against Baylor, Ramsey had 20 big points and hit 5-10 shots from deep. But Moretti and Edwards were just a combined 7-22 overall and 2-12 from 3-point range as the Red Raiders fell 57-52.

In Morgantown, it was Moretti who was the only guard that could find the range as he scored a team-high 16 points including 4-9 from distance. The problem was that Ramsey and Edwards were just 1-9 deep as a pair and combined for just 17 points.

That has changed in the past week as Edwards has played the best ball of his Red Raider career. Thus, in the last two games, he and Moretti have given Chris Beard two guards that have been able to take over the game as each has had at least 14 points in both games.

It’s been timely for Edwards to take off given that Ramsey has cooled off recently. He’s averaged just 8.3 points per game in the last three outings. Imagine how much the Red Raiders might have struggled had they not received 23 p.p.g. from Edwards during that span.

Last year, we saw the Texas Tech offense take off when grad transfer guard Matt Mooney took his game to a new offensive level at around this point in the season. On January 12, 2019, he had 22 points against Texas in Austin but after that, he four points over his next three games. But starting with the victory over Arkansas in the Big 12/SEC Challenge, he had just four single-digit scoring efforts in the final 20 games of the year.

When Mooney found his offensive identity, he joined with Jarrett Culver and Moretti to give Tech three starting guards that could threaten defenses. That included every game in the NCAA Tournament when he had at least ten points.

Once that happened, Tech actually had one of the most efficient offenses in the nation. But prior to Mooney’s emergence, Tech had lost three-straight games and fans were ready to jump off a cliff as the Red Raiders averaged just 57 points in their worst stretch of the year.

Likewise, when Edwards went off for a career-high 24 points against Kansas State, it put an end to a two-game losing streak that had many concerned about whether Tech could score enough points to compete for a Big 12 title. Of course, we are yet to know if Edwards can keep his hot hand as the competition increases. After all, KSU and ISU are two of the three worst teams in the conference.

But in the last two games, we’ve seen this roster function more like it was built to. Edwards, Moretti, and Ramsey are now going to give Big 12 coaches nightmares as they try to figure out how to guard this three-headed monster.

Three players capable of taking over a game make the Red Raider attack versatile and when combined with the all-around games of Terrence Shannon Jr. and Chris Clarke, there are five guards/wings in the Red Raider rotation that can come up huge on any given night. Hopefully, that sparks the same type of run through Big 12 play that we saw last year when a third reliable scoring guard emerged the way Kyler Edwards looks to be doing this year.

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