Texas Tech basketball: 5 reasons the Red Raiders lost to Providence

Free throw disparity was completely in favor of Providence

Make no mistake, there were plenty of reasons why Tech lost this game.  And we will detail four more in just a moment.

But this was a lopsided game when it came to the officiating and that played a massive role in the outcome.  There’s simply no way to deny that.

For the night. Providence was 28-38 from the free-throw line while Tech was 17-24.  Any time one team makes more free throws than the other team attempts, it’s going to tilt the scoreboard.

What is so frustrating for Tech fans to stomach though is that it wasn’t as if Providence played a passive game and actively tried not to foul.  Sure, they spent a large portion of the night in a zone defense, which often cuts down on the number of fouls that a team incurs.  But they played an extremely physical game in their own right.

In fact, Providence wanted to muck up this game after finding out early that their horses could not run with Tech’s horses in the open court. Thus, the fact that Tech was whistled for seven more fouls in this game seems unfair.

Again, this was a great eye-opener for this Red Raider team as nights like this are going to happen in Big 12 play (most likely in Morgantown) and Tech will have to find a way to fight through it.  But that didn’t happen on Wednesday night.

Providence was led in scoring by Al Durham’s 23 points, 12 of which came at the line as he missed only one free throw.  But for the rest of the night, he was just 5-13 from the floor.  That goes to show how the line can change a game for a player and for an entire team as he made only five fewer free throws than the entire Red Raider roster.

Sure, Providence was always going to have a significant home-court advantage in this game.  But to see that play out in such a blatantly obvious way as a 14-free throw edge was disappointing.