Texas Tech basketball: Other seasons that didn’t live up to the hype

In 2005-2006 Tech has losing record one year after going to the Sweet 16

The travesty of this year’s season is that Tech won’t be able to follow up last season’s magical run to the National Title Game with another March run.  That’s similar to what happened in 2005-06 as the Red Raiders managed to end the year just 15-17 overall to miss the NCAA Tournament after reaching the Sweet 16 in 2005.

While the 05-06 team had to deal with the loss of point guard Ronald Ross, there was plenty of talent on the roster including two of the program’s five top all-time scorers and three players that would eventually top the 1,000-point mark for their careers.

Jarrius Jackson, the second-leading scorer in Tech history behind Emmett was a junior on that team and he averaged an impressive 20.5 points per game. Meanwhile, Martin Zeno, Tech’s No. 5 all-time leading scorer was also on that team.  The lefty managed 13.7 points that year as a sophomore.

One of the freshmen on that team was sharpshooter Alan Voskuil.  The Bedford, TX product was nowhere near the player that he would eventually become by the time he was a senior as he mustered just 3.6 points per game.  He finished his career as one of 42 players in Tech history with at least 1,000 career points.

But also adding to the hype that year was the presence of the highest-rated player to ever sign with the Red Raiders up to that point, Dior Lowhorn.  A 6-foot-6 forward from Berkley, California, he was rated the No. 62 player in the nation and a 4-star prospect when he arrived.

Unfortunately, he never lived up to that billing and in his only year in Lubbock, he averaged just 7.2 points per game.  He would leave after that season to head to San Francisco University where he averaged 19.5 points per game over his final three seasons as a collegiate.

Don’t forget that on that team was another name Red Raider fans likely remember as well, Darryl Dora.  As a junior, the 6-foot-9 forward who is most known for his three-pointer to beat Kansas in Lubbock the previous season averaged 7.6 points and 4.6 rebounds. But with Dora as the team’s tallest regular contributor, Tech struggled inside during an era when size in the paint was far more essential than it is in the modern game.

We got our first dose of reality that season in the third and fourth games when Tech lost to No. 16 Syracuse 81-46 and No. 19 Wake Forest 78-73 in OT on consecutive nights in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic in New York City.  In all, Tech would go 0-6 against ranked teams that season.

What’s more, a team with plenty of talent to compete also dopped games to San Francisco, Louisiana Tech, UNLV, and Arkansas (all of which were unranked).  In the end, this was the beginning of the twilight of Knight’s career and it seemed like that year’s team either sensed as much or just started to tune out its hall of fame coach.

Less than two years later, Knight would hand over the reins of the program to his son Pat and Tech basketball would be forever the worse for it.  And though we didn’t know it at the time, a 15-17 season, which included a 6-10 conference record, was a harbinger of things to come over the next decade of Red Raider basketball.  No one saw that coming just one year after the program reached the Sweet 16 in what was the high point of the Bob Knight run in West Texas.