Texas Tech basketball: Red Raiders regress in loss to Oklahoma State

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Head coach Chris Beard of the Texas Tech Red Raiders (Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images) /

The turning point was a microcosm of the entire game

To understand just how this entire game unfolded, one would only have to look at the two-possession turning point that played out in the final minute. That’s because every area of the game that was problematic for Tech on Saturday showed up on those back-to-back possessions.

With Tech down 68-67, Ramsey brought the ball into the frontcourt. For some reason, he drove the ball into a congested area where Kyler Edwards was standing outside of the 3-point line near the corner of the court.

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Because there was little room to operate, Ramsey was bottled up and eventually had the ball stolen by Laurent. Ramsey needed to be stronger with the ball but Edwards’s strange decision to run behind Ramsey as he drove, thus bringing his own defender into the area to help corral Ramsey, was just as big of a mistake on that play. In fact, Laurent, who came up with the steal, was actually guarding Edwards and had Edwards not taken him towards Ramsey, he wouldn’t have made the play that turned the game.

All afternoon, the Tech offense was disjointed and lacked the movement that is essential in the motion offense. In this instance, Edwards’ decision to move towards the ball in an area of the court that was already bottlenecked was the wrong play and it was costly.

But had the Red Raiders come up with a stop, they could have been shooting to win the game on the final possession. That didn’t happen because of yet another OSU offensive rebound.

Forcing an air-ball from Lindy Waters, Tech did what they needed to do. But McCullar failed to put his backside into Laurent as he tried to hand fight with a senior who is 20-pounds heavier than he is.

Laurent was able to come down with the rebound and on the play, McCullar was called for a foul. That led to the third aspect of this exchange that was a microcosm of the afternoon, OSU’s free-throw line dominance.

Making both of his free throws, Laurent gave his team a 3-point lead. For the game, he was 7-8 at the line on his way to 16 points. Meanwhile, Tech was just 12-20 as a team.

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Though this is not the sequence that sealed the game, it was where OSU took control. A critical turnover, an allowed offensive rebound, and clutch free-throw shooting by the opposition…if you only watched two possessions of this game, these two would have told you all you needed to know about how things unfolded for the Red Raiders on Saturday in Stillwater.

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