Texas Tech basketball: Kentucky loss felt eerily similar to National Title Game

Texas Tech’s leading scorers were dreadful

In both games, while Kentucky and Virginia saw their leading scorers put up career-highs, Tech’s leading scorers had their worst games as Red Raiders. That makes it tough to be the best teams in the nation.

Saturday night, freshman Jahmi’us Ramsey was so bad that he was essentially benched down the stretch in favor of fellow freshman Kevin McCullar Jr.   In what was a continuation of a recent trend in which he’s been woefully inefficient, Ramsey was just 3-9 overall, 0-2 from long-range, and 0-1 at the line.

Scoring just six points, he missed out on an opportunity to show up his fellow Dallas-area 2019 classmate Tyrese Maxey from Garland, Texas.  Kentucky’s five-star freshman signee was also poor on Saturday as he managed just seven points on 2-10 shooting.

Tech needs its freshman star to rediscover his game as soon as possible.  He’s shot below 34% from the field in four of his last five games and he continues to be absolutely awful from behind the arc where he’s now just 3 for his last 21.

"“He missed some shots that he would usually make,” Kentucky head coach John Calipari said  “… We know how good he is. He’ll bounce back from this game and he’ll be fine.”"

Much of the credit for Ramsey’s struggles have to go to Kentucky’s perimeter defense, which gave Tech fits all night.  Hagans is as good of a defender as he is a scorer and distributor and he locked down Ramsey for most of the night and forced the freshman into some awful shot attempts from the outside.

It was reminiscent of the Virginia game in which Jatterr Culver was flustered by the Cavilers.  Going just 5-22 from the floor that night, the Big 12 Player of the Year set a record for misses in a National Title Game.  What’s more, he had a chance to win the game in regulation but he took a questionable pull-up 3-pointer rather than drive the ball to the bucket and make something happen.

Like Ramsey had been doing prior to Saturday, Culver went into that National Title Game not playing his best.  In the Elite Eight, he shot just 26.3% overall and in the Final Four, he shot 25% overall as he went 3-11 from behind the arc.

To win critical games, your best player often has to step up and carry your team.  That is what Richards did for Kentucky on Saturday and what Hunter did for Virginia in April.  Unfortunately, neither Ramsey or Culver could do the same for Texas Tech.