Texas Tech basketball: Unsung heroes from win over the Horns
In the Texas Tech basketball team’s 68-59 victory over Texas on Saturday, these unsung heroes came up big.
It feels as if the Texas Tech basketball team might have finally turned a corner on Saturday. In its 68-59 triumph, Tech played one of its best games of the year and looked more like the typical Chris Beard team.
Tech certainly played like the hungrier and more desperate team. And that mentality served the home team well in the second half when Texas was held to just 5-25 shooting as a team.
"“Guys have been trying really hard all season,” Beard said. “Defense is just still a work in progress. We see that kind of defense in practice. We see that kind of defense for segments of games. But I thought today that we sustained it for the most part.”"
In that second half, Texas never led and never had a scoring run greater than 5-0. Were it not for the free-throw line, where Texas was 14-19 after halftime, this game would have been a complete blowout.
"“We don’t really have a plan to stop Texas with that kind of talent and that kind of spacing,” Beard said. “We just want to be the more aggressive team. If you sit back and hope that that team misses, it’s not going to work. So today, whether we got a hand on the ball or triple-teamed in the post…we’d certainly rather be over-aggressive than not aggressive enough, especially against a team as talented as that team today.”"
It was refreshing and encouraging to see this team finally put away a game that it led by double digits in the second half. After all, recently we’ve seen such leads evaporate.
Against West Virginia in Morgantown, Tech led by 12 points with just 12:25 to play before falling 88-87. And a week ago, the Red Raiders held an 11-point lead with 13:52 remaining but couldn’t hang on in a 74-69 OT loss.
This time though, Tech managed to secure the win the way we’ve come to expect from Chris Beard teams. So let’s go inside the game and look at some of the unsung heroes who helped bring home the “W”.