Texas Tech basketball: Hidden turning points in Red Raiders’ victory over WVU

WVU’s Derek Culver picks up early second foul

The WVU game plan is rather simple.  They want to feed the post early and often knowing that few teams in the nation can match the size they feature in the post with 6-foot-10 Derek Culver and 6-foot-9 Oscar Tshiebwe.

But when one of those big men are sent to the bench with foul trouble, they lose their greatest tactical advantage.  That was what happened Wednesday when Culver had to leave the game at the 9:17 mark of the first half after picking up his second foul.

What made the foul all the more troublesome for the Mountaineers was the fact that it was completely unnecessary.  Being boxed out in the paint by 6-foot-3 Davide Moretti, Culver inexplicably put a forearm in Moretti’s back and sent him flying to the ground.

Rebounding in the Big 12 often resembles two bears wrestling for the right to inhabit a cave as big men like Culver and Tech’s T.J. Holyfield engage in hand-to-hand combat techniques that we normally see along the offensive line in football games.  So one has to wonder if Culver has simply become so accustomed to pushing and shoving other big men when trying to rebound that he didn’t even think twice about giving the 180-pound Moretti, who he has a 75-pound advantage over, a shove the way he might opposing forwards.

Instead of just trying to out-jump a player he has seven inches on, he made a stupid play.  As a result, he spent the remainder of the first half on the bench.  At that point in the game, he had yet to assert himself the way he would after the intermission.

But this foul was also key because it put Tech in the bonus about as early as any team could ever hope to be.  For the remainder of the half, Tech hit 12-14 free throws, a huge factor in their ability to take a four-point lead into the break.

In the second half,  Culver was 10-12 at the line, the primary reason his team was able to stay in the game.  But because he spent nearly a fourth of the game on the bench after picking up his second foul, WVU’s size advantage was significantly neutralized.