Look, as Grant McCasland and the 5-seed Texas Tech Red Raiders get set to meet up with Nate Oats and the 4-seed Alabama Crimson Tide, we’re about to see a fascinating matchup between two teams that are pretty similar in a number of ways.
Both of these teams won comfortably in the opening round (each win was by 20 points, by the way) and both of these teams are winning with relative ease on a very regular basis (Texas Tech shows up with a +8.2 scoring margin for the season while Alabama has a +8.0 scoring margin).
And both of these teams are very comfortable with scoring plenty of points frequently. That’s largely because both of these teams excel when it comes to shooting from behind the three-point line.
Can the Texas Tech Red Raiders win a shootout against the Alabama Crimson Tide to advance to the Sweet Sixteen?
The Red Raiders have done a great job of shooting from deep pretty much all season, but things have been even more focused on that since JT Toppin’s season ending injury.
With Texas Tech’s leading scorer and rebounder (21.8 points per game and 10.8 rebounds per game) out, the Red Raiders have put an emphasis on draining threes and they’ve got some great shooters in Donovan Atwell and Christian Anderson.
Texas Tech makes 39.7 percent of its shots from three-point range while holding opponents to just 31.3 percent shooting from behind the three-point line. This is an area that Texas Tech can try to fight back against Alabama. But, well, we’ve got to remember that the Crimson Tide also thrive in shooting from deep.
Alabama isn’t as efficient, but they make 35.9 percent of their three-point attempts and have averaged 12.8 threes made per game (which happens to be more than Texas Tech’s 11.5 threes made per game). So, you can expect both of these teams to make some shots from deep in this game.
We just have to hope that Texas Tech is more efficient at spacing the floor and can find a way to slow Alabama’s shooting from deep. Because the Crimson Tide have some noteworthy advantages in some other categories.
Like blocks per game (5.0 vs 3.8), points per game (91.7 vs 80.7), rebounds per game (40.6 vs 36.8). Texas Tech has got to play at a high level and has got to be efficient in its shooting to be able to overcome some of those deficits enough to come out on top of this matchup.