Texas Tech basketball: 5 surprises so far in 2020-21 season

Beard’s reliance on small-ball

Can this year’s team survive with only one actual post player in the regular rotation?  And can the team compete inside given that that one player is 6-foot-7?  Only time will tell.

But what’s surprising is that Beard seems to be content to try to live that way.  That’s because when his starting “big man”, Marcus Santos-Silva, has been off the court, Beard has gone with a small-ball lineup instead of trusting the other two post players on his roster.

It is now obvious that Beard has an 8-man rotation that he’s going to lean on.  Of that group, Santos-Silva and redshirt freshman Tyreek Smith are the only post players.

But while Santos-Silva is playing 22.2 minutes per game, Smith has gotten only 8.9.  And as for 7-foot true freshman Vlad Goldin, he’s seen only 5.8 minutes per game, fewest of any player on the team.

So when the foul-prone Santos-Silva has been on the sidelines, Beard has often gone to a lineup with 6-foot-7 freshman wing Micah Peavy as the biggest player on the court.  While that type of lineup is murder on opposing guards and wings given how long and versatile Tech’s perimeter players are, it puts this team at a disadvantage on the boards.

Against OU, a game that saw Santos-Silva foul out, Tech was out-rebounded by seven and surrendered 14 offensive boards.  The Red Raiders also lost the rebounding battle to both Kansas and Houston by five.  What’s more, the Cougars were able to come down with 13 offensive boards against Beard’s guard-heavy team.

This year, we thought that Tech would be stronger on the glass than last year when Beard went guard-heavy and relied on only one true post player.  That’s because the presence of Goldin and the return from injury of Smith were both supposed to give this year’s team more options.  But it appears that Beard is going to keep going to his comfort zone and that small-ball will once again be a huge part of his strategy.