Texas Tech basketball: Red Raiders fight off pesky Kansas State in Lubbock

T.J. Holyfield gave his team a solid effort after struggling in Stillwater

One of the reasons Beard could afford to lean so heavily on his starters was the fact that senior forward T.J. Holyfield stayed out of foul trouble.  Playing 27 minutes, the grad transfer scored nine points, grabbed five rebounds, blocked two shots, handed out two assists, and came up with two steals.

That was a much-needed rebound performance after he was limited to just 14 minutes, scoring five points, and collecting three rebounds in his last game.  Simply put, this team can’t survive if Holyfield is riding the bench because of foul trouble as was the case in Stillwater.

Against the Wildcats, he picked up just three fouls and that was a huge reason Tech was able to win the rebound battle as well as outscore KSU by one point when it came to second-chance scoring.

When Holyfield is out of the game, Beard has shown that he is not going to turn to 7-foot freshman Russell Tchewa except for in extremely brief spurts.  Thus, he has to either turn to Clarke or Shannon for some semblance of size on the floor and given how both of those players are struggling right now, that’s far from ideal.

If Beard is going to have to shrink his bench, it’s going to mean increased minutes for his only true post presence.  And though T.J. Holyfield wasn’t spectacular on Wednesday night, he gave his team the type of performance that he has to come up with on a game-by-game basis for the rest of the year if the Red Raiders are going to be able to compete at the highest levels.