Texas Tech’s perfect season isn’t perfect anymore. On Saturday, as the Lady Raiders hosted the Kansas State Wildcats, Texas Tech wasn’t able to get a win over one of the least impressive teams in the Big 12 (at least from an overall record perspective, that is).
And as such, Texas Tech is now 19-1 overall and Kansas State is now 10-9 overall. The Wildcats handed the Lady Raiders their first beating. And that’s not ideal. It’s not ideal at all. It actually may have made it clear what other teams need to do to secure a win against Texas Tech this season.
Here’s a few stats that help make it clear exactly how the Texas Tech Lady Raiders were unable to get a win against a less-than-great sort of team like Kansas State.
It’s incredibly clear that losing a rebounding battle by 26 rebounds will make it very difficult to win a game against Kansas State
To be completely honest, it’s hard to beat anyone when they’re completely and totally dominating you in the paint and on the glass. Your favorite basketball team’s foe getting rebound after rebound after rebound will make it tricky for your favorite basketball team to actually come out on top of a game.
And that happened Saturday when the Wildcats came to Lubbock. Kansas State grabbed 46 rebounds (which is a solid, healthy total) while Texas Tech had just 20 (which is abysmal and awful). And from an offensive rebounds perspective, the Wildcats won that one 17-3. Yeah, that’s bad.
Continuing on with those sorts of battles, Texas Tech really couldn’t do much in the paint against Kansas State
The Lady Raiders had tons of issues against the Wildcats’ front court and Kansas State may have truly created a blueprint for other teams to beat the Lady Raiders this season. Win the rebound battle, score a bunch of points in the paint, and keep Texas Tech from doing much damage in the paint.
Kansas State happened to get 28 points in the paint against Texas Tech. And that happened to be double what the Lady Raiders got against the Wildcats.
Texas Tech just couldn’t keep up down the stretch, which is really worrying
I really, really don’t love that Texas Tech seemed to be worn down by the Kansas State Wildcats in this game. Entering the fourth quarter, Texas Tech actually had a lead over the Wildcats at 44-42, but that wasn’t something the Lady Raiders could hold onto, apparently.
Texas Tech shot just 31.3 percent from the field in the final period as Kansas State managed to hit on 50 percent of its shots in the final frame.
And that’s not just something that was observable in the fourth quarter. Texas Tech didn’t just seem to wear down then. This also happened in the second quarter against the Wildcats. The Lady Raiders made just 2-of-12 shooting from the field while Kansas State hit 5-of-13 in the second quarter.