Friday night, the Texas Tech basketball team entered its Big 12 Semifinal matchup with Arizona without two starters, Chance McMillian and Darrion Williams. What's more, Big 12 Player of the Year, JT Toppin, played despite being under the weather. Still, the Red Raiders gave the Wildcats all they could handle before falling 86-80. However, the loss might have been exactly what Tech needed.
The last thing Tech needed this week was to play another game, its third in three days, and for that game to be against another physically dominant team in Houston. The likelihood of beating the Cougars in Saturday's final would have been small meaning that all the Red Raiders would probably have done by hanging around Kansas City for an extra day is absorb more phyiscal punishment.
Instead, Tech heads back to Lubbock knowing it played well and competed hard against Arizona and looking forward to a chance to recover and heal before next week's NCAA Tournament. Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to take two steps forward.
Texas Tech continues to show remarkable grit this season
The Red Raiders can hold their heads high after giving Arizona a tough test on Friday night. Despite missing about 30 points from the starting lineup in the form of Williams and McMillian, the Red Raiders never backed down, even when it looked like the Wildcats might run away and hide. It was yet another instance when this team has been undermanned but put up such a fight that it had a chance to knock off a quality team.
After trailing 47-39 at halftime, Tech was able to pull to within four points late in the game. However, the Wildcats, who shot a blistering 50.8% from the floor, simply made too many tough shots and too many free throws down the stretch. In fact, the free-throw line is where Tech essentially lost this game. Entering the game shooting over 77% as a team for the season, Tech struggled going 19-30 (63.3%) at the line Friday night. Meanwhile, Arizona was 16-21 (76.2%).
Despite the loss, it was entertaining to see some Red Raider role players step up and keep their team in the game. Backup guard Kevin Overton had a team-high 20 points to go along with six rebounds and three assists in 34 minutes.
Meanwhile, after struggling in Thursday's victory over Baylor, freshman guard Christian Anderson (who started in McMillian's place) put up 19 points while playing all 40 minutes. He wasn't the only freshman who had to play, though.
Down to only six members of the normal rotation, head coach Grant McCasland had to ask Leon Horner to log some minutes in the first half. Playing in only his seventh game of the season, Horner didn't score, but he did come up with a rebound and a blocked shot while playing strong defense in seven minutes of action.
It was the second year in a row that Tech has been undermanned in the Big 12 semifinals. Last year, when facing Houston in their second game in Kansas City, the Red Raiders were without starting center Warren Washington and Darrion Williams. And like this year, they fought hard but came up short of reaching the conference tournament finals.
However, winning the Big 12 Tournament was never this team's ultimate goal. Though Red Raider fans would love to finally see their program cut down the nets in K.C., it would be much more satisfying to see McCasland cut down the nets in San Antonio next month at the Final Four.
For that to happen, though, a rather thin and banged-up Texas Tech team needs to recover physically and ramp up for the only tournament that matters. Thus, getting out of Kansas City a day early was not the worst thing imaginable for this team.