Texas Tech basketball: The good, bad, and ugly from victory over Northwestern State

The good: 22 assists

Chris Beard’s favorite stat may be assists.  It is rare for him to hold a postgame press conference without mentioning that stat.  That was the case on Wednesday night after his team dished out 22 assists on 38 made baskets.

"“That’s what we’re looking for,” Beard said, “unselfish basketball.  And tonight, there were a lot of good assists out there.  That’s probably one of the top two or three things I saw that I was most proud of, I told the guys that after the game in the locker room.”"

Four Red Raiders had at least three assists on the night.  That included Kyler Edwards who had a team-high of six.

It will be interesting to see if that is going to be the new normal for the junior who last year was asked to carry a ton of the offensive load in regards to both scoring and facilitating.  But this year, Tech has far more offensive weapons to shoulder the scoring burden meaning he may be tasked with setting up others as much as he will be tasked with putting the ball in the basket himself.

Edwards may be as close as there is on this roster to a point guard and after one game, it appears that he might be embracing the role of the facilitator.  He had a modest 10 points on 4-7 shooting in 21 minutes of action but he was responsible for 13 more points thanks to his ability to create shots for his teammates.

Last year, the Red Raiders averaged 15.4 assists per game, which was good for 27th in the nation.  They got off to a great start in that regard this year, which was excellent to see given how many new faces Beard was working into the rotation.

"“Definitely something you guys should expect to see all season,” forward Marcus Santos-Silva said when talking about how well the team has gelled early in the season.  “We [weren’t] surprised about how we were going to gel but it was really good today.”"

It certainly was good for a season debut in which 66% of the players that saw the floor did not play a minute for the Texas Tech basketball program a season ago.  Hopefully, high assist numbers is a trend that we see all year.