Texas Tech basketball: Putrid effort leads to disappointing loss at TCU

The Texas Tech basketball team put forth an absolutely putrid effort on Tuesday night in a 65-54 loss at TCU.

It isn’t supposed to be Chris Beard’s team that is the one being outworked, outhustled, and outplayed when it comes to effort and intensity. But that’s exactly what happened Tuesday night in Fort Worth as TCU handed the Texas Tech basketball team a 65-54 loss that wasn’t really as close as the 11-point final margin might suggest.

Dropping to 3-3 in Big 12 play and 12-6 overall, Tech was actually ahead 31-27 at halftime. However, the lead could have been more as the Red Raiders held an 8-point edge at 23-15 in the middle of that half. Unfortunately, sloppy basketball let the home team stem the tide and then the second-leading scorer in the Big 12 absolutely took over.

TCU’s Desmond Bane did his best Lebron James impression and the Red Raiders did little to slow him down. Finishing with 27 points on 10 of 15 shooting, he was by far the best player on the court and for him, Tech had no answer.

Bane finished the first half with 14 points, outscoring the rest of his teammates single-handedly. In the second half, his sidekicks began to pitch in and Tech wilted like a bluebonnet in the last week of April.

While TCU’s best player was going off, Tech’s two best playmakers were atrocious. Between them, sophomore Kyler Edwards and freshman Jahmius Ramsey combined for just 26 points (one less than Bane had on his own) on 10 of 24 shooting. That included a combined effort of 2-10 from 3-point range.

It was the end of a nice two-game run for Edwards that saw him average 23 points in the two games his team played last week. But the reigning Big 12 Player of the Week was not the same caliber of scorer on Tuesday night with just 8 points on 4 of 10 shooting and 1-4 from behind the arc.

Meanwhile, Ramsey continued his poor play as of late. In the four games since he had 20 points against Baylor in the second Big 12 game of the year, Tech’s leading scorer has not been the same player, especially from 3-point range.

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At one point this season, he was shooting over 46% from behind the arc but after a 1-6 shooting effort from deep against TCU, he’s now made just 3 for his last 19 over the course of the last four games.

Though he led his team with 15 points, most came after the game had been decided and when his team needed answers to help survive Bane’s second-half onslaught, Ramsey was unable to answer the call. Nor were any of his teammates.

As a team Tech shot just 4-17 from 3-point range. Meanwhile, Bane himself was 6-8 from deep as TCU hit 8 of 20 buckets from distance.

When the TCU 3s didn’t fall, big man Kevin Samuel was leading the charge on the offensive glass, where the Frogs pulled down 11 boards. As part of his 11-point, 11-rebound game, the 6-foot-11 center collected seven offensive boards. That’s one more than the entire Red Raider roster was able to secure.

This game felt like the first time all year that Chris Beard saw his team simply fail to put forth the effort required to win. TCU was quicker to loose balls, more hungry on the glass, more intense on defense, and more desperate for a victory.

It was shocking to see Tech’s offense struggle to put up just 56 points and shoot a mere 22-51 from the floor while getting to the line just eight times against a TCU team that entered the game seventh in the conference in points allowed in conference games at 68 points per game. But once Samuel started to impose his will inside, he had two blocks and deterred or altered many more, the Red Raiders began settling for jumpers from the outside, most of which were contested.

Perhaps the 10 points and from grad transfer forward T.J. Holyfield were the brightest spot on the night for Tech. The problem though is that the 6-foot-8 forward was able to grab only two rebounds. That was less than four of the five TCU starters managed. In all, Tech lost the battle on the boards 34-27 in what is becoming a recurring theme.

If this roster believed that it can simply rest upon the name on the front of its jersey to carry it back to the NCAA Tournament, it is finding out the hard way that life in college basketball doesn’t work that way. Playing like an entitled team that looked like it thought it could just waltz into Fort Worth and beat helpless little TCU, Tech was humiliated and hopefully humbled.

The reality is that this team is nowhere near deserving of an NCAA Tournament bid at this point. With only one win over a team from a major conference with a winning record (No. 1 Louisville), this year’s version of the Red Raiders is yet to live up to the expectations that everyone around the nation had for the program.

And on Tuesday night in Fort Worth, the Red Raiders failed to live up to the expectations that their head coach has set for them as well. They were sloppy, timid, lethargic, and uninspired thus allowing TCU to have a party at their expense. It’s safe to say that the next few days of practice won’t be a party for the Red Raiders as Chris Beard tries to get his team to understand what it takes to play Texas Tech basketball. Based on what we saw in Fort Worth, there’s a long way to go to get there.

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