Game Links:
Tortilla Tossin’ Player of the Game: Let’s go with Kevin Overton even though there’s a good thought that Darrion Williams was fantastic. Overton gets it because I don’t think he’s received this esteemed award yet, but he was really good, including 7 of 11 from the field, 4 of 6 from deep, 6 boards, an assist and 2 turnovers for the game. Of those 20 points, 17 of them came in the first half where he absolutely buried the Bears.
The Motion:
- A 25-point win even though it seemed like Texas Tech didn’t play that well, but Texas Tech sure as heck played really well and distanced themselves even though it didn’t seem like they should have at all. Imagine being a bit disappointed with the opening play where Texas Tech couldn’t hit much of anything, but just kept hammering away and really pulled away.
- Going into this game, Northern Colorado was not a good shooting team, but they sure kept shooting despite statistics saying that they should have been trying to score inside. That didn’t make much sense to me and the one guy who could hit, Bloch, was the one guy who went 2-4. I don’t know that Texas Tech won’t get as lucky when there’s a team that will hit those outside shots.
- Texas Tech won this game because they dominated the boards 43-28, JT Toppin had 15 rebounds and was just wiping the boards clean and he was relentless, as was Williams who had 10. Rebounding is largely effort and spacing and they do that well.
- A weird turnover game and very few assists, 15 turnovers, led by Toppin who had 5 and Hawkins had 3, while the game-high was only 3 assists and 3 players had 3 each, Hawkins, Williams and Anderson.
- Christian Anderson was terrific in the first half in addition to Overton. Anderson scored 12, but scored 6 in each half, went 2-2 from deep in the 1st half and then 2-4 in the 2nd and he’s got such a great shot and is a steady hand, he’s going to be so good.
- Haven’t even talked about who could have been the POTG as Darrion Williams led the team with 21 points, on 6 of 9 from the field, 10 boards, 2 turnovers, 3 assists, and 1 steal. He’s so good in everything he does, I don’t know what position he plays professionally or if he has the footspeed to keep up with wings athletically, but he can do so many things so well.
- It was mentioned during the game that Devan Cambridge was out for personal reasons (weird) and there were no questions about it after the game. And we also saw the season debut of Eemlei Yalaho who had 4 minutes.
- Advanced stats say that the best player was Williams at +20.3, then Anderson at +18.0, Overton at +11.6, McMillian at +3.6 and Federiko at +2.9.
- Head coach Grant McCasland: “Northern Colorado is a really good team that is hard to defend and who can score in different ways. We started slow, but my favorite part about tonight was coming into the second half we challenged our group to be better defensively. They were 1-for-7 from the field because we were more connected and competitive on ball-screen scenarios.”
- Up next? Wednesday, December 4th Texas Tech hosts DePaul, tip-off at 8:15 p.m. and the head coach is former Ohio State head coach Chris Holtman. The Red Raiders will have to guard agains ghost of Dallas Comegys (Dallas is still alive and is 60 years old).
Highlights