Texas Tech basketball: The good, bad, and ugly from loss to Houston

The Bad: Tech’s offensive execution

There’s a key component to the motion offense, which the Red Raiders run under Chris Beard…motion.  So when there is an absence of that critical element, things are going to get ugly as was the case for Tech on Sunday.

The best way to understand how poorly Tech executed on offense, consider that they had just seven assists on 18 made baskets.  That’s just 38.8% of the made field goals.

By contrast, in the first two games combined, Tech had 38 assists on 64 made shots.  That’s 59.3%.

Of course, the level of defense Tech was facing from Houston was much greater than was the defense from Northwestern State or Sam Houston.  But still, Tech would have had more offensive success had the ball and the players had more motion.

Even when Tech did finally start to have some offensive success, it wasn’t through properly executing the motion offense but rather letting McClung create off the dribble.  Using isolation plays with one player has been something Beard has gone to over the years with players like Jarrett Culver and Keenan Evans but it isn’t how this team is going to make its living full-time.

In this game, it appeared that the Red Raiders simply abandoned their game plan when they realized how intense the U of H on-ball pressure was.  That’s not surprising from a team with so many newcomers because when games become more intense, players often revert to old habits, and given that most of this year’s team is new to Beard’s system, the habits he wants them to eventually create have not had time to develop.

So look for the motion offense to improve as the season progresses and the players on this roster become more comfortable running that system.  And hopefully, the type of offensive sluggishness we saw on Sunday will be rare from this year’s team.