Texas Tech basketball: Numbers to know as Tech heads to Stillwater
Today, the Texas Tech basketball team will be in Stillwater to face Oklahoma State so let’s take a look at some important numbers to know.
Today, the Texas Tech basketball team has yet another opportunity to do something that no team in program history has done. If the Red Raiders came come out of Stillwater with a win over Oklahoma State, it will be the first time Tech has won road games against the Cowboys in consecutive years. That’s not too surprising given that OSU is 23-5 at home in this series all-time.
Of course, last year was one of those rare successful trips to Gallagher-Iba Arena. In fact, it was one of the easiest wins Tech has ever managed in this series.
Exploding for a 78-50 win, Tech shot 51.8% from behind the arc while holding Oklahoma State to just 25%. Jarrett Culver had 19 points to pace the Red Raiders as the visitors took a 44-23 halftime lead and never looked back.
That game came in the middle of a run that saw the Red Raiders win 9-straight Big 12 games to end the regular season on their way to a share of the conference title. And this year’s game also comes with Tech riding a nice winning streak of three games.
Meanwhile, the Cowboys have started to play some better basketball as well. After starting conference play 0-8, they have picked up wins in two of their last three games.
On February 5th, they took down TCU 72-57 in Stillwater and a week later they grabbed a 64-59 win in Manhattan, Kansas over Kansas State. What’s more, their loss in between those two games was a hard-fought 78-70 contest against No. 1 Baylor. That night in Waco, OSU was within one possession of the lead in the final two minutes of the game.
One has to wonder if this could be a potential trap game for Chris Beard’s team. After five days of hearing everyone around Lubbock and the Big 12 praise them for their 46-point dismantling of TCU on Monday night, can they bring that level of intensity into a game against a team that has little to play for this year other than disrupting the plans of their conference rivals?
That’s the challenge facing the Red Raiders as they look to move to 17-8 overall and 8-4 in league games. If they do, they will remain a game ahead of West Virginia for third place in the conference race, something that could easily be a factor in the team’s eventual NCAA seeding.
So let’s get prepared for this matchup by taking a look at some critical numbers to know. And we will start with one that isn’t a typical stat we examine on a game-by-game basis.