It seems like almost every time a Texas Tech team, regardless of the sport, has a chance to make a statement on a national stage, the Red Raiders come up short. That was again the case on Thursday night.
Facing a good Saint Joseph's team on national television and with a chance to play Texas on Friday night by winning, the Texas Tech basketball team couldn't overcome an awful first half and came up one possession shy of picking up a big win in a 78-77 loss in the Legends Classic. Now, Tech will face Syracuse, not the Longhorns on Friday night in the third-place game.
Falling behind by as many as 16 points in the first half, the Red Raiders were completely out-played by the Hawks in the first half. However, head coach Grant McCasland saw his team roar all the way back to erase a 10-point halftime deficit and take the lead late in the game.
Unfortunately, the Hawks made the plays in the final minute, including the game-winning free throw from Justice Ajogbor, a career 52.9% free-throw shooter. The loss is Tech's first of the season and a missed opportunity for a resume-building win that this team could lament come Selection Sunday in March.
Here are some quick thoughts on this maddening game.
Texas Tech doesn't go to its star down the stretch
Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of the game's conclusion from a Red Raider perspective is the fact that the Red Raiders didn't find a way to get the ball to their star, JT Toppin, when the game was on the line. Instead, Darrion Williams missed a shot on both of the last two possessions to seal Tech's fate.
For the game, Toppin was spectacular. Going 8-13 from the floor, he had 22 points to go along with 18 rebounds (12 of which were on the offensive glass). He almost single-handedly carried Tech back into the lead in the second half and the Hawks had no answer for him, especially after one of their big men, Rasheer Fleming, fouled out.
In the final minute, with the game on the line, Tech should have ensured that Toppin got a touch. Everything ran through him in the second half and it nearly carried the Red Raiders to a win. But instead, Tech had to settle for two shots from its second-best player, Williams, who though he scored 18 points, was just 7-19 shooting for the game. It was a mistake not to get Toppin at least one touch on those two possessions in the final minute.
Texas Tech goes with the freshman point guard down the stretch
In what was a surprising decision by McCasland, freshman point guard Christian Anderson, who was playing in just his third game as a collegiate, was the point guard the Red Raiders rode down the stretch, not senior Elijah Hawkins. One has to wonder if that was a mistake at the end of the game.
Anderson ended the game with 5 points, 4 assists, and 3 rebounds in 23 minutes. He also had no turnovers.
Meanwhile, Hawkins played 26 minutes scoring 4 points, handing out 3 assists, and grabbing 3 rebounds. He did have a pair of turnovers as well.
However, Hawkins is a better on-ball defender and floor general than Anderson and those traits are why it was odd that McCasland closed out the game with a long stretch with the freshman running his team. And on the final possession, when Tech needed a quality play, Anderson dribbled right into trouble and nearly got tied up before shoveling the ball off to Williams but only after draining several precious seconds off of the clock.
If McCasland isn't going to trust Hawkins when games like this are on the line, then it seems tough to understand why he was brought into the fray. Anderson has a bright future but it doesn't seem like this was the right time to put an important game in his hands.
The free-throw line costs Texas Tech
In this game, one team shot 85% at the line while the other shot 69%. However, it was the latter of those teams that prevailed.
While Tech was excellent at the free-throw line going 17-20, they got nine fewer foul shots than the Hawks did. For the game, Saint Joseph's was 20-29 proving that sometimes quantity is better than quality.
The 3-pointers didn't go Texas Tech's way
Finally, the biggest surprise of the night had to be what happened at the 3-point line. Entering the game, Tech was 5th nationally in 3-point percentage at 45.1% while Saint Joseph's was just 208th in that category at 32.4%.
But of course, as so many Texas Tech opponents seem to do, the Hawks shot out of their minds from deep, especially in the first half. Overall, they knocked down 12 of their 22 attempts from beyond the arc. That's 54.5%.
Meanwhile, a Tech team that entered the game averaging 11.5 makes per game from deep went just 4-20 (20%). The Red Raiders' best 3-point shooters, Kerwin Walton and Chance McMillian, combined to go just 3-7 from deep and that hurt the offense tremendously.
Meanwhile, Saint Joseph's starting guards, Xzayvier Brown and Erik Reynolds II went a combined 7-14 from downtown. That included 6-11 from Reynolds who led his team with 26 points. What's more, Anthony Finkley, a career 28.8% shooter from 3-point range, went 2-2 from long distance including a wild banked-in 3-pointer in the first half that was one of the ugliest shots of the night. In a one-point game, that proved to be a huge moment.