Texas Tech basketball: How the Red Raiders beat the Mountaineers

Let’s take a look inside the box score from Wednesday’s 89-81 victory over West Virginia to see just how the Texas Tech basketball team was able to pick up this critical victory.

Coming off of two-straight losses and facing a trip to Lawrence, Kansas this weekend, Wednesday night’s home game against West Virginia felt like a must-win for the Texas Tech basketball team.  Losing would have given Tech a second 3-game losing streak and likely opened the door for a 4-game slide while also seeing the Red Raiders miss out on another opportunity to pick up a much-needed Quadrant-1 win.

We also didn’t know how much energy the team and the crowd would have left after expending so much in Saturday’s loss to Kentucky.  But the Red Raider fans brought the energy once again and the team fed off of it.

The Red Raiders also played with the requisite sense of urgency when trying to beat the No. 12 team in the nation.  Never trailing on the night, Tech jumped out to a 12-4 lead and never really suffered one of the lengthy lulls that have come to be almost nightly occurrences for this year’s team.

"“We don’t say that very often, but it was a must-win for us,” junior Davide Moretti said. “We had to bounce back after a tough loss against Kentucky and we got the job done. I think we’ll go into Kansas with good momentum and bring our A-game.”"

Coming off a 4-13 shooting effort against Kentucky that saw him hit just three of eight shots from behind the arc, Moretti was fantastic with 25 points on 6-10 shooting and 4-5 from 3-point range.  He was also 9-9 at the free-throw line, which was nice to see after his last-minute miss that could have won the game on Saturday.

But even more important for Tech was the return to form by freshman guard Jahmi’us Ramsey.  Getting rid of the protective face mask that he’s worn since high school, he had his first excellent game since January 7th when he put up 20 points against Baylor.  Wednesday, he put up 21 points and hit 5-8 from deep and afterward, he was asked about doing away with the mask.

"“I had been playing with it for a while and just decided to put it down,” he said.  “My teammates really got me going today. Moretti hit me with an open look to get it going, and that was the first step.”"

So let’s go inside the box score to see where the Red Raiders had the edge.  We will start with the fact that the Red Raiders’ got a surprising edge in a key head-to-head matchup.