Texas Tech basketball: How the Red Raiders beat the Mountaineers

West Virginia didn’t have a massive free-throw edge

In Morgantown, Tech saw the Mountaineers shoot 28 more free throws on their way to a 17-point edge at the line.  That was for all intents and purposes the difference in the game.

But when West Virginia plays on the road, officials seem to be more apt to call fouls on Bob Huggins’ team given that the most curmudgeonly coach in the Big 12 and the league’s biggest bully of referees doesn’t have a throng of 12,000 fans there to intensify his ability to manipulate the calls in his team’s favor.

It is just a fact of life that the Mountaineers are going to get to the line a ton.  That’s what they want to do.  Feeding their two 6-foot-10 forwards, they lead the Big 12 in free throw attempts.

On Wednesday though, the Red Raiders got some whistles to go their way, including three technical fouls on the visitors.  In all, Tech shot 25 more free-throws than we saw in Morgantown.  Making 28-32, the Red Raiders shot 87.5%.

The Mountaineers still had the edge as they shot 41 free throws.  But they were able to make just 33 of them holding only a 4-point edge in that aspect of the game.  Thus, their biggest advantage from the first meeting of the year was essentially neutralized and it made a tremendous difference.