Texas Tech basketball: Red Raiders grind out win over West Virginia
It was never easy and it was rarely pretty but on Saturday, the Texas Tech basketball team ran its home winning streak to 15 games with a 78-65 win that felt much closer than the final score indicated. Here are three key takeaways from the Red Raiders’ second consecutive win.
Volume at the line
It feels like every time Texas Tech and West Virginia lock horns, the free-throw line always plays a huge role in the outcome of the game. That’s because both teams play a rugged, physical style of basketball on the defensive end of the floor thus putting the onus on the officials to sort through the hand-to-hand carnage.
On Saturday, it was the Red Raiders that got the benefit of the whistles from the boys in the stripes. Though Tech shot just 69.4% (25-36)from the line as a team, they were able to win this game one point at a time thanks to an advantage of 14 extra trips to the stripe over the Mountaineers.
This marked the second-straight game in which Tech has had a huge edge at the line. On Tuesday, Mark Adams’ team had a 38-15 edge in free-throw attempts over No. 15 Iowa State in a 72-60 win, and again on Saturday, as was the case against the Cyclones, Tech made more free throws than the opponent shot. And for the second time this week, that proved to be a huge key in an important victory.
Overall, Tech isn’t a good free-throw shooting team by percentage as they entered Saturday shooting just 67.6% as a collective. However, with 364 attempts on the season (prior to Saturday) Tech has shot the most free throws in the Big 12 proving that sometimes volume can help make up for a lack of accuracy.
Shannon awakens
Anyone criticizing Terrence Shannon Jr. for his lack of production in the previous two games was being rather shortsighted given the fact that the Red Raiders’ star wing had, prior to last Saturday, essentially been away from the court (both in terms of games and practice) for a month due to back spasms. In the two games since his return, he had scored only six total points while looking a bit timid and rusty with the ball.
That all changed against Iowa State as the Chicago native led all scorers with 23 points, one away from his career-high. And he came up huge when Tech needed him most.
After WVU knotted the game at 48-all with just under ten minutes to play, Shannon caught fire. He would score 13 of the Red Raiders’ next 26 points, including a pair of 3-pointers, to help push the Red Raiders out to a double-digit margin in the closing minutes, a run punctuated by a high-flying dunk to give Tech a 10-point lead.
It was refreshing to see how efficient Shannon was from the floor making 7 of 12 field-goal attempts and getting to the line seven times (making six). That’s the type of Terrence Shannon Jr. that Red Raider fans have been waiting over a month to see.
McNeil quiet
While WVU’s Taz Sherman, the Mountaineers’ best scorer, had a big game with 21 points, his backcourt running buddy, Sean McNeil, was uncharacteristically quiet in this game. Held to just seven points on 2-7 shooting, the guard, who was heavily recruited by Texas Tech out of junior college, was 0-3 from beyond the arc, a huge factor in the Red Raider win.
For the season, McNeil was averaging over 14 points per game prior to his trip to Lubbock. In fact, he had been held below ten points just one other time this season.
A dangerous shooter when he gets hot, McNeil is a 41.8% marksman from deep this year but he struggled to find the range on Saturday. In fact, he struggled to find any open looks from beyond the 3-point line as his three long-distance shots were tied for his second-fewest in any game this year.
For what it’s worth, Tech did a decent job on Sherman after halftime by holding him to just eight points following his 13-point outburst in the opening 20 minutes. But one of the keys to this game was the defense Tech played on McNeil and by keeping one of the Big 12’s best shooters in check, the Red Raiders took away WVU’s second-best scoring option.