Texas Tech basketball: Five thoughts on Tech’s dominant win over Omaha

Tuesday night in Lubbock, the Texas Tech basketball team continued to feast on cupcakes as the Red Raiders made short work of Omaha 96-40.  This marked the fifth-straight double-digit victory to begin the year for Mark Adams’ team.

For the second-straight game, guard Terrence Shannon Jr. led Tech in scoring, this time with 18 points on 6-11 shooting.  Meanwhile, transfer guard Davion Warren was also solid with 14 points while transfer forward Adonis Arms added 10 points off the bench.

So let’s dive a little deeper into this game with five thoughts on what we witnessed at United Supermarkets Arena.  And we will begin by admitting something that every Texas Tech basketball fan is thinking.

It’s time for Tech to play a real opponent

It’s understandable why Adams set up this year’s schedule to open with six teams that can’t really spell basketball, much less play it effectively enough to challenge his team.  After all, he wanted ample time for his team to gel and work out the kinks that are naturally going to come when you have a roster featuring seven newcomers.

But it is time to see this team play a real opponent.  So far, the teams Tech has played have a combined record of just 2-23 on the season.  Yawn.  The blowout wins are fun and all for a while but this team needs to be tested in a big way and fortunately, that’s about to happen.

After one more game against the little sisters of the poor (also known as Lamar), the Red Raiders will travel to Providence to take on a Friars team that is 5-1 on the year and which has won on the road at Wisconsin and which has also beaten Northwestern out of the Big 10.

Then, Tech will face No. 15 Tennessee, a team that just beat No. 18 North Carolina by 17 points.  What’s more, after a game with Arkansas State, the Red Raiders will try to topple No. 1 Gonzaga, a team that has already beaten No. 5 Texas and No. 2 UCLA.  Therefore, December should be a fascinating month for Texas Tech basketball fans and that’s good news given how much of a snooze the first month of the season has been.

The defense is rounding into form

Granted, Omaha is no world-beating program and the Mavericks were playing their fourth-straight road game since November 13 but Tuesday night’s defensive showing was Tech’s best of the year.

It wasn’t just that the Red Raiders held Omaha to 20 points in each half and 26.5% shooting for the game.  It was that Tech’s defensive rotations were far crisper and the overall defensive effort was much more smothering than any we’ve seen so far this year.

Again, the opponent Tech was playing likely would have a hard time competing for the District 5-6A title in Texas but still, the effort Tech put forth on the defensive end of the court was a step in the right direction.

Omaha shot just 20.7% (6-29) from 3-point range and they turned the ball over 19 times while mustering just eight assists.  Again, it will be interesting to see what Tech’s defense looks like against a competent team but all we can go on is what we’ve seen thus far and Tuesday’s defensive effort simply looked more like what you would expect from a Mark Adams defense than any this year.

3-point shooting was improved

There is still reason to be concerned about the Red Raiders’ ability to hit shots from beyond the 3-point line.  But for at least one game, Tech was rather effective in that critical aspect of the game going 8-16 against Omaha.

While shooting 50% is great, it isn’t sustainable for a season, especially for this Red Raider team.  But what was encouraging was the efficiency that Tech showed from long distance.

Tech should never be a high-volume 3-point shooting team.  That’s simply not what the individual pieces of this roster are best at (with perhaps the exception of Kevin Obanor).  But rather, this year’s squad should be selective and timely with their 3-point attempts as they were on Tuesday night.

It was nice to see Terrence Shannon hit 3-4 from beyond the arc.  In his two games played, he’s hit 50% of his attempts from 3-point range.  If that’s a part of his game that has truly improved, then look out because he could be in for a monster season.

In each of the previous three games, Tech had attempted at last 23 shots from downtown.  That’s too many for this team.  But with Omaha playing nothing but man-to-man defense, the Red Raiders attacked the rim more and were much more selective with the 3-ball and that helped their efficiency to be at a season-best in that aspect of the game.

Mylik Wilson is a great piece to have off the bench

Overshadowed this offseason by the additions of more heralded transfers like Bryson Williams and Kevin Obanor, Mylik Wilson has already proven to be an integral component of this year’s team and on Tuesday, he was back in the starting lineup with Kevin McCullar missing the game due to an illness.

Wilson contributed eight points on 4-4 shooting and four assists with no turnovers.  He also came up with three steals in just 19:22 of action.  That’s a quietly efficient game for a player that’s quickly becoming a critical component of this year’s team.

Wilson is a steadying hand.  He is more than capable of running the show at the point guard spot and he doesn’t turn the ball over as he has 21 assists and only two turnovers on the season.  And it’s important to have a player like that to come off the bench, as Wilson will do when Tech is at full strength with both McCullar and Shannon in the starting lineup.

Batcho plays well again

If Saturday’s 8-point, 8-rebound game against Incarnate Word was Daniel Batcho’s announcement that he’s ready to be a legitimate component of this year’s regular rotation, he reaffirmed that with another strong effort against the Mavericks on Tuesday.  Scoring six points and grabbing a team-best 10 boards in just 16:02 of action, the 6-foot-11 redshirt freshman continues to show that he’s more than just a long-term project.

Sure, Tech fans have grown jaded to the presence of young centers after four-straight big men (all from Putnam Science Academy in Connecticut) flammed out in recent years before ever becoming what we hoped they could be.  But Batcho appears to have a different career trajectory than Malik Ondigo, Josh Mballa, Russell Tchewa, or Vlad Goldin, none of whom ever truly cracked the regular rotation for the Red Raiders before transferring to other programs.

Batcho’s already proving that he can be a useable piece on this team.  He was one of the first players Adams brought off the bench and Tuesday night and he’s played quite a bit with power forward Marcus Santos-Silva to give Tech a powerful one-two punch in the post when Adams turns to his reserves.

So keep an eye on Batcho as the competition ramps up in the upcoming weeks.  Will his play continue to warrant significant minutes?  It could, especially given how foul-prone Bryson Willaims is proving to be thus far.  Thus, it is encouraging to see the light start to come on for Batcho.  Here’s hoping that it’s not just a flicker while playing against lesser competition.