Game Links
Game Recap
Tortilla Tossin’ Player of the Game: Daniel Batcho gets this. In just 16 minutes he grabbed 10 boards, scored 6 points, had 6 assists, 1 turnover, and a block. Absolutely dominate in limited minutes.
Multi-Purpose Player of the Game: Davion Warren gets it for me. Warren had 14 points, had 4 boards, 1 assists, a steal, a block, and was fantastic defensively.
Game Notes:
- I’m starting this at halftime because time will be short in the morning and there’s things to type. Mainly that Texas Tech very much turned it on in the first half and were the team that I thought they would be from the beginning of the year. I thought the defensive intensity was there tonight. there were multiple shot-clock violations on Omaha, and generally speaking, the rotations and the close-outs were absolutely fantastic.
- Daniel Batcho is good because he can guard the perimeter. That’s always been the issue with the big men and why Chris Beard never played them was because they messed up his perimeter defense and couldn’t switch. Batcho doesn’t mess up rotations or the ultimate plan on defense which is to switch everything. The offense for Batcho is gravy for Adms I think and the fact that he can put it on the floor, drive past a defender and dunk? /chef’s kiss/
- Adonis Arms is so good and it is a shame he is over-shadowed by other really good players. Arms is so good defensively and a pretty good shooter, passer, defender, he gets lost in the shuffle, but he is so good at those things it’s just like having another Shannon that’s not quite as good, but he’s right there if he had more time to develop.
- Davion Warren is going to be so good in the Big 12, he’s going to be a revelation for the rest of the Big 12. The kind of revelation that’s more of “oh shit” than anything divine. Warren’s ability to score in so many different ways is sort of other-level. And his defensive buy-in is all-in. All-in.
- Chibuzo Agbo battled for an offensive board, scored, and maybe he’s found his shot. It’s amazing how that works. He scored 7 points on 3 of 4 and looked good. Sadaar Calhoun looked like he found his legs a bit as well, scoring 8 points on 3 of 4 from the floor as well.
- Sometimes I struggle to remember when Mylik Wilson shoots the ball and then I remember that he’s doing some sort of smooth spin move away from the defender and scoring a layup. I can almost promise you that on any given night his +/- is going to be off the charts because when he enters the game good things happen. There was a spell for the game when Wilson and Nadolny were in there together and that was a weird lineup because neither are shooters, but they’d both play really great defense.
- It is now the morning after the Box Plus/Minus are now available and believe it or not Wilson was a net +8.1 the best on the team and right behind him is Shannon, Batcho, and Arms in terms of having the best effect on the team so yes, these are good players and they are the players that had the most positive effect on the game last night and that’s not a surprise.
- Your leading scorers were Terrence Shannon, Jr. who scored 18 on just 11 shots. Your team leader in assists was Daniel Batcho, which is insane that your center had 6 assists to lead the team. Batch also led the team with 10 rebounds. Here is Adams on Batch: “He is a great young man and our staff worked really hard with him. He’s very coachable. We’ve talked a lot about his high basketball IQ. He had six assists if you can imagine for a kid that’s 6’11. He’s still a babe when it comes to what he can do. He’s making so much progress each game. It’s fun to watch him continue to develop, everyone just loves him on the team.”
- Texas Tech absolutely dominated in all of those small stats that make up the bigger part of a game. Texas Tech scored 54 points in the paint and Omaha scored 10. Texas Tech scored 27 points off of turnovers compared to 9. The bench scored 49 points compared to 21 to Omaha. Fast break points were 13 to 2 for Texas Tech. Texas Tech didn’t dominate the offensive boards like they have in previous games, but they did dominate the boards, 45 to 26.
- Head coach Mark Adams: “I’m excited to see a lot of our guys go into the game and contribute like they did. It was overall our best game on both ends of the floor. I’m just pleased with our defensive effort. I thought this was the first time we actually tried to really guard for the entire game. I’m excited to see our practice starting to pay off. I thought our offense started to flow and everyone shared the ball. It was a good night for us.”
- I’ve thankfully got a few days off, as does the team, who does not play until Lamar on Saturday at 3:00 p.m.
Highlights