Thursday’s 58-57 loss to Kansas in Lubbock had a number of hidden moments where the game turned in the Jayhawks’ favor.
New season, same problem. All of a sudden, the Texas Tech basketball program can’t seem to pull out close games in the final minute.
In the 2019-20 season, we saw Tech drop all eight of its games that either went to OT or which were decided by five points or fewer. Thus, closing out those types of games had to have been a focus of the program throughout the offseason program.
But in this year’s first opportunity to prove that they have improved in that critical aspect of the game, Tech was unable to make the plays down the stretch against Kansas. And as head coach Chris Beard spoke to the media after the game, the disappointment was visible in his body language and his demeanor as he appeared rather drained and beaten down by what had transpired over the previous two hours.
"“A lot of frustration,” Beard said. “We’ve had some real battles with Kansas in our five years here, we’ve been involved in some of these one-possession games. Tonight’s a little different for me because I think a lot of it was self-inflicted.”"
By self-inflicted, Beard is referencing free throws. His team continues to fail to take advantage of those opportunities for free points and last night, it once again bit Tech in the rear end.
Going just 11-18 (61.1%) at the line, the Red Raiders left seven points on the court that could have prevented this game from coming down to the final possession. On the other side, Kansas was fantastic at the line going 14-15 (93.3%).
"“Not gonna sugarcoat this,” Beard said. “Extremely disappointing. I thought we had chances to win this game tonight and we didn’t.”"
This is the second time this season that the free-throw line has been costly in a Red Raider loss. When Beard’s team fell to no. 17 Houston, they shot just 13-24 (54.2%) at the line in a 64-53 defeat.
Unfortunately, like Tech’s late-game struggles, untimely failings at the free-throw stripe is a problem that seems to have carried over from last year even though Tech has seven newcomers on this year’s team.
Remember the 57-52 home loss to Baylor from last season? That night, Tech was just 5-12 at the line.
In the 76-74 OT loss to Kentucky, Tech missed six free throws including one in the final seconds from Davide Moretti, who was a 90% free-throw shooter for his career. That one miss could have put Tech ahead by a point with just seconds remaining and likely would have been the winning point for the Red Raiders.
Losing to Oklahoma State in Stillwater last season, Tech was just 12-20 (60%) at the line. Thus, that 73-70 defeat can be chalked up to free-throw failings as well.
What’s more, when Kansas came to Lubbock last season and took home a 66-62 win, the free-throw line once again let the Red Raiders down. That night, Beard saw his team shoot just 8-13 (61.5%) at the line.
I don’t know how you coach free throws. The challenge is to make them as intense as possible in practice to come as close to a real game situation you can. But that’s next to impossible given how the heart rate and the nerves are amped up in the final minute of a game.
But last night’s game was still there for the taking despite Tech’s free-throw woes. In fact, there were some hidden moments when Tech missed out on other opportunities to win the game. So let’s take a look at five moments that didn’t look all that meaningful when they happened but which had a huge impact on the KU victory.