Texas Tech basketball: Numbers to know as Red Raiders face Sooners

Seven of the nine Sooners that played in the first game against Tech combined for just 26 points

When the Sooners nearly upset the Red Raiders in Lubbock, Brady Manek and Austin Reaves combined for 35 points.  The other seven Sooners that saw the floor combined for just 26.

That means that Tech’s leading scorer, T.J. Holyfield, scored just five points fewer than 77% of the Sooners that played in the game.  If Tech can turn the Sooners into a two-man show again tonight, it will bode well for the Red Raiders.

What was key in Lubbock was that Tech held OU’s leading scorer in check.  Kristian Doolittle had just eight points on 4-7 shooting (though he did manage a team-high 11 rebounds).  That’s 7.4 points fewer than he’s averaging on the season.

This is essentially a 3-headed OU attack with Doolittle, Manek, and Reaves accounting for 62.6% of their offense.  Each of those players averages at least 14 p.p.g. while no other player on the roster scores over seven points per game.

This is where it feels like OU might be losing a bit of an advantage by playing this game off-campus.  It’s common for role players to perform better at home thus, one has to wonder if the likelihood of someone outside of the Sooners’ top three players having a big game is going to be diminished by playing in a less familiar building.

Where the Red Raiders seem to have an edge in this matchup is that there are more players on their roster capable of having big offensive games than there are on the OU roster.  In fact, only once this year as a player outside of the three top Sooner scorers led them in points for a game. If Tech can cut off one of the three heads of the Sooner attack as was the case in Lubbock, this game could once again be a rather low-scoring affair, which plays into Tech’s hands.