Texas Tech will look to make an energetic return to the court when it meets West Virginia on Saturday afternoon in the Big 12 game in Lubbock, Texas.
Red Raiders No. 9 was plagued by an empty tank in the last minutes by a 69-66 road loss to TCU on Tuesday. Texas Tech’s score production was 16 points below the season’s average.
Red Raiders coach Grant McCasland pointed to himself for why his squad spouted after taking a four-point lead with less than seven minutes to play.
“I got to do a better job – played too many guys for many minutes,” McCasland said. “Felt like these guys had the understanding of what was required to win this game, but we ended gasoline and couldn’t end it.”
Texas Tech (20-6, 11-4 Big 12) has shared their last four matches after winning the seven previous ones.
Making the game against the rock climbers (16-10, 7-8) even more crucial is that Red Raiders play no. 5 Houston, Big 12 leader, on Monday.
Big Man JT Toppin will look back after having only 14 points against TCU. He got 32 points in a victory against Oklahoma State on February 15 and a career best 41 the previous match in a double overtime victory against Arizona State.
Toppin has set up four double doubles in a row. He was an average of 20 shots during the first three of these games before he went 5 out of 9 against TCU.
“They just doubled him the whole game for a long time and got the ball out of his hands,” McCasland said. “… you just swing basketball to some guys and you do them and it does that where you can’t do it so often, and we have succeeded. But yes, they were physical and pushing his elements out.”
Toppin leads the Red Raiders in points (17.1 points per match) and rebounding (9.2 per match). Darrion Williams is an average of 15.2 points and 4.0 assists, and Chance McMillian gets 15.1 points per match and has beaten a team-leading 64 3-point.
West Virginia comes from a much needed 62-59 home victory over Cincinnati on Wednesday. The rock climbers lost six of their previous eight matches.
However, it was nervous time along the route against Bearcats after Javon Small made two free throw to give West Virginia a 62-53 lead with 34 seconds left.
Cincinnatis Dan Skillings Jr. Drilled a 3-pointer with 7.9 seconds left, got the ball again on a bad pass from West Virginia’s Amani Hansberry and struck another ten-second ten second to play.
After a timeout, the mountain climbers turned Joseph Yesufu the ball and Bearcats had the ball under his own basket. The incoming pass went to a wide open Tyler Betsey, but his binding of 3-point attempts bounced from the front edge with less than two seconds left.
“Sometimes when you haven’t had much success recently, some of the doubts can crawl in, and some of the doubts crawled into the last shot when it was in the air,” said mountain climbing Darian Devries.
Hansberry had 17 points and a career best 13 returns and small were added 16 points while working through 36 minutes.
“My ankle injured a bit, but it happens in basketball and injuries happen,” said small. “Sometimes you just have to play through them. I just played through mine.”
Small leads the rock climbers in points (18.5 ppg), assists (5.5 per match), 3-points (62) and steal (45).
This is the lonely match with regular season between the team this season. They met once last season, with Texas Tech Notching an 81-70 road victory.
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