Game Links:
Tortilla Tossin’ Player of the Game: Going to go with Donovan Atwell, who was maybe asked to do too much, but the offense was in a weird spot. He scored 19 points on 7 of 17, 5 of 13 from deep, 4 boards and just 1 turnover on the night.
The Motion:
- Well dang. That’s exactly what you didn’t want to have happen. I think that the committee will punish losses moreso than wins and that’s not the end of the world at this point, but knowing that you have BYU on the road, which isn’t an easy out, even without Saunders.
- The defense was the most concerning thing, TCU was okay in the first half, making 42% from the field and 25% from deep, but in the 2nd half the defense was non-existent, 52% from the field and 50% from deep. And then TCU was just murdering Texas Tech on the boards, 39-25 in favor of TCU and the Horned Frogs had 16 offensive boards to just 7 for Texas Tech. And to go along with that, TCU had 22 2nd chance points to just 8 for Texas Tech.
- I’ve been harping on the turnovers and that was something that TCU does to teams and sure enough, Texas Tech had 15, an unacceptable amount, 6 of them were from Anderson and 3 of them were from Petty, your guards that you sort of don’t expect to turn the ball over and that resulted in 18 points for TCU, while TCU had 12 turnovers themselves, that was only 11 points for Texas Tech.
- It doesn’t help that Bamgboye is in foul trouble again, 19 minutes, and this is not just TCU, but Bamgboye gets himself in bad spots defensively and then has to foul. Sometimes it is his fault, but a lot of times it is not. TCU took advantage of his availability, or lack thereof, and scored 38 points in the paint to just 22 for Texas Tech.
- Watts was a passenger again, just 19 minutes and this wasn’t a situation where he was in foul trouble, he just didn’t find his groove and that’s troubling. Texas Tech needs him to be present and not just a guy.
- We’ve talked before about how everyone needs to squeeze a bit more from their game and that didn’t happen. Anderson was 4 of 11 from the field, 1 of 7 from beyond the arc and he did have 9 assists, but have already mentioned the 6 turnovers. Bryan didn’t make any shots, at times he’s afraid to take them, and those two along with Watts and Bamgboye needing to do more, that’s a big part of it. I also think that TCU needed this game and it showed, they were on the NCAA bubble and I think after a road win like this they are clearly not.
- Encouraging things would be that Petty scored 17 points on just 6 of 8, including 5 of 7 beyond the arc. And Moseley scored 8 on 4 of 6 from the field and led the team with 6 rebounds.
- Head coach Grant McCasland: “We’ve improved over the last four games in every area and I thought we were prepared for tonight, but Coach Dixon and their team have been doing this to a lot of teams. They’ve been rebounding and getting to the free-throw line. I love that we can get exposed now so that we can learn from it. That’s what I’m excited about. This has been our deal. When we’re scrappy on the glass and can get 50-50 balls and come up with the in-between plays, we’re awesome. And when we don’t, this is what we get. We’ll keep leaning into that and get our guys to embrace it too on nights when it feels hard.”
- Advanced Stats: Petty +1.8; Atwell +1.2; Watts +1.1; Moseley +0.9; Bamgboye -0.9; Bryan -2.1; Anderson -3.8.
- Up next? Texas Tech heads to Provo to take on BYU on Saturday, March 7th, with tip-off at 9:30 p.m. and the game broadcast on ESPN.
Highlights