Game Links
The Motion
- Tennessee State is kind of a trash team. Some of the clear-path fouls that they had were blatantly terrible fouls and if your Red Raiders weren’t ready to instigate something, that could have caused an incident. That didn’t sit right with me. Fouls are fine, just running into an opposing player with your shoulder is not okay.
- I felt that Beard was almost testing his team to see what they were made of without TJ Holyfield. Don’t get me wrong, I think that had Holyfield not been in foul trouble, he would have played, but I think that Beard wanted to test his team a bit and I think it gave them something to really work on with some opponents. There’s no doubt that Holyfield is going to be in foul trouble at some point and this team simply must be better at creating offense (not necessarily jacking up jump shots) than they were last night. A team cannot be so one-dimensional and I think Beard very much realized that. He’s got some real nice video about how the team is just standing around the perimeter and not using the offense to work for them.
- Beard mentioned this after the game, but Chris Clarke needs to be more offensive in his offensive production. Him simply looking away from the basket isn’t going to get it done and I thought before the season that Clarke needed to average double-figures for this team to be successful. I still somewhat believe that, but Clarke needs to be a viable offensive threat. Passing is great, but scoring and making teams respect your offensive game is important too and obviously helps create those opportunities to pass the ball.
- Davide Moretti obviously saved the day, a huge game, scoring 19 points on 6 of 11, including 4 of 7 from the three-point line. His biggest hiccup was 4 turnovers, which didn’t seem correct, but I’m not going to argue with the box score.
- I like Jahmi’us Ramsey, but if his outside shot isn’t falling, he’s got to use his athletic ability to get to the rim because continuing to take fadeaway or contested jump shots isn’t going to cut it. Ramsey missed all 6 of his three-point attempts and wasn’t even close on some of them. I like how he grabbed 7 rebounds, which was great, but get to the line and use that athletic ability to create inside.
- Speaking of Clarke, he had 12 rebounds, which is sort of insane, but he had only 1 shot. Add 4 assists were very good, but please look to score.
- Terrence Shannon, Jr. was 2 of 7 and Kyler Edwards was 1 of 11 for the game. That’s just not okay, and the same criticism of Ramsey applies to the two of them, there is no reason to just take outside shots if they’re not falling. Be better than that. They both ended up scoring in double-figures, Shannon had 13 points and Edwards had 10 and they both rebounded well, 7 for Shannon and 6 for Edwards, but Texas Tech really won’t survive shooting nights like that on a regular basis from 3 of the 5 starters.
- I really like Kevin McCullar and if he makes his free throws he maybe has the 2nd or 3rd best game on the team. I like his activity defensively and his size and ability to take players off the dribble is really nice. I also sort of like how he picks his spots. He also has to watch the fouls, 4 in just 18 minutes.
- Tennessee State shot better than Texas Tech, 35% to 34%. Woof. TSU even had a better three-point shooting effort, 29% to 26%. The difference was Texas Tech getting to the line and making those free throws (this is a shoutout to all of you who complain about free throws) where Texas Tech made 32 of 38 free throws, which is 84%.
- Chris Beard on Texas Tech’s intensity:
“Yeah, it is a given. I mean it is what you are supposed to do when you play at this level. If you wear the double T, that guys like J Jackson wore, I mean you play hard around here. Tonight, I thought that a couple of time that Tennessee State played harder than us. We had a nice conversation about that at halftime, and our second half intensity was better. I thought both teams played really hard tonight. You have to give credit to the defenses for the bad shooting night.”
- Beard on what he looks at after the game:
“Turnovers, rebounds, free throw shooting. So, tonight turnovers still aren’t where we want them to be, little bit of improvement but that’s not going to get it done as we go on. Obviously rebounding, I was really disappointed in our offensive rebounding tonight, when you have a shooting night like we did tonight this happens, but you have to go get your share. We won the game tonight on the free throw line, you got to give our gives some credit, step up their and hitting a good percentage, over 80% we showed some poise and composure when things got a little crazy out there stayed away from the temptation to get involved in anything that could lead to a technical. I thought our free throw shooting won the game for us tonight, on a night when a lot of other things just weren’t good enough.”