Texas Tech basketball: The top 25 Red Raiders in the Big 12 era

No. 24: Cliff Owens

Another player who came along at the wrong time thus rendering his career somewhat forgotten by most fans is Cliff Owens.  But make no mistake, the 6-foot-8 forward from Santa Fe, Texas was a steady player despite being on some teams that didn’t exactly surround him with talent.

In 105 career games, Owens averaged 8.9 points and six rebounds.  And playing almost exclusively in the paint in an era when big men didn’t rely on the mid-range or 3-point game to get their offense, he shot 54.2% from the field for his career.

Pulling down 635 career rebounds, Owens ranks 15th in Texas Tech history.  What’s more, his 338 rebounds in Big 12 games rank 4th-most of any Red Raider.  That worked out to an average of 5.63 rebounds per game in conference play, which is still good for 7th in program history for the Big 12 era.

Playing from 1996-97 to 2000-01, Owens experienced the final sad days of the James Dickey era,  which saw the program ravaged by NCAA sanctions.  Thus, his only winning season came in his freshman year, and that year, he was not a key figure in the rotation as he averaged just 1.4 points per game.

But after that, he put up at least 10.2 points and 7 rebounds per game in each of the final three years of his career.  He was a steady presence in a time period when Tech hoops experienced considerable turmoil given the probation the program was placed on.  That’s a shame because it meant that the contributions of one of the better forwards to come through the Hub City in the last 25 years were largely wasted.  But that doesn’t take away from how good Owens was as an individual player.