Grant McCasland and the No. 16 Texas Tech Red Raiders are continuing to roll even without one of the best players in the country. JT Toppin, sidelined by a season-ending ACL injury, was Texas Tech’s leading scorer and rebounder.
That said, so far, the Red Raiders have done just fine in their two games without their leader being available. Texas Tech managed to beat Kansas State by 28 points over the weekend and then just secured an 80-68 win over a sneaky and interesting Cincinnati Bearcats team.
Let’s go over a few intriguing stats that showcase just how solid this win was for McCasland and his Red Raiders.
Stat 1: Texas Tech was able to control the glass without any sort of issue, outrebounding the Bearcats by 16
I think I’m not totally surprised that the Red Raiders were able to have a positive rebounding margin when facing the Cincinnati Bearcats, but I’m completely and totally shocked that the difference between these two was this significant.
Texas Tech managed to get 40 rebounds while Cincinnati had just 24 rebounds. And this comes just one game after Cincinnati managed to steal a dominant win on the road from the Kansas Jayhawks. And again, this happened with Toppin not available and his 10.8 rebounds per game average not present.
Stat 2: Donovan Atwell and Christian Anderson are absolutely thriving from behind the three point line in historic fashion
Donovan Atwell just recently, in Texas Tech’s last game, managed to break the single season record for the most threes made by a Red Raider as he got to 100. He’s now up to 104 on the season, which is just astonishing given that there’s more games to be played.
The old benchmark was set by Cory Carr with 94. And that’s now a total that Christian Anderson has managed to match as well. We’re so close to, in one season, having two Red Raiders break a nearly three decade old stat record.
Stat 3: Texas Tech dominated in the second-chance point comparison vs. the Bearcats
Okay so this one is directly connected to the sort of rebounding dominance that the Texas Tech Red Raiders had against the Bearcats, but we’ve got to talk about how Texas Tech managed to get 19 second-chance points while Cincinnati had just eight.
The Red Raiders really delivered in such a meaningful way when facing off against the Bearcats. Their ability to get 12 offensive boards and then turn around and score a fair bit of points is truly impressive (and will hopefully continue when meeting up against better teams).