Given that there’s still one more day before Texas Tech plays against Georgetown, I thought I’d take a look into some numbers for Texas Tech, more so than what I typically write in a preview. Let’s go to T-Rank.
- For the next 6 games, they will all be at home and all be against competition where Texas Tech has a minimum 94% chance of winning. That means, even against Georgetown, they will be playing against some pretty terrible teams.
- Georgetown is the best of those 6 teams, 176th in T-Rank, while the next opponent is Nicholls State ranked at 177th.
- If there was ever a time to work on some items, this would be it. Play crisp basketball.
- Texas Tech’s biggest flaw on offense is still turnover percentage, 293rd overall. Texas Tech really got those bad numbers against two teams, Northwestern State and Louisiana Tech where the turnover percentage for those games was 30%. Wins, but sloppy wins.
- The defense’s biggest issue is free throw percentage and free throw rate. I mentioned this previously, but in Texas Tech’s two losses, Creighton made 13 of 17 and Ohio State made 18 of 18.
- The normally awesome defense was not awesome against Creighton and Ohio State, allowing 120.3 points per possession and 129.3 PPP against Ohio State. Add to that the eFG%’s of 64.3% and 59.6% as Creighton made 62% of their field goals and the Buckeye’s made 59%. This was probably a combination of the size of these teams and I think that’s something that Texas Tech lacks and I can’t wait for Aimiq to get back so that Obanor can play just the power forward and not the center. My thought would be that Aimiq could play center and when Obanor needs a break, Aimiq could play the power forward and Batcho can play center. I think it just gives the lineup a bit more versatility.
- One other thing about Aimiq is that he’s wearing that boot and I think it is going to take some time for that leg to get acclimated, so I don’t know if that’s part of the equation of Aimiq getting back. Conference play starts at the end of December. Aimiq was wearing the boot for the Big 12 Media Days in the middle of October and most of the time breaks take 6 to 8 weeks to heal (I think and only know about this because of Youssouf’s recent broken toe) and I think that Aimiq was wearing the boot prior to the Big 12 Media Days. My point is that we should be nearing 8 weeks around the middle of December at the latest and then a few weeks to acclimate.
- And that may be the other issue where Obanor doesn’t really have a true backup and maybe figuring out if it is going to be KJ Allen or Robert Jennings.
- Obanor, Harmon, and Walton are all shooting absolutely abysmal from deep. that has to be corrected otherwise this thing isn’t going to work (most likely). Steve Green’s offense is predicated on players hitting from deep, it opens everything up and I’d say that the focus of the offense should be getting everyone clean shots.
- Jaylon Tyson and Pop Isaacs are shooting well from beyond the 3-point line, 47% for Tyson and 42% for Isaacs.
- The good news is that Batcho, Obanor, Harmon, Tyson, Allen, Jennings, and Walton are all shooting really well inside the arc, so now let’s figure out how to get those shooters some open looks.
If you want to look at things graphically it is clear that the 3-point rate is the biggest issue with turnovers following. I think that 3-point rate is the rate in which a team shoots free throws and what the defense allows.
