by Christian Hay
The No. 11 Texas Tech Red Raiders took down the No. 20 Texas Longhorns on Saturday 61-55 at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas, to complete the season sweep.
Texas Tech has now swept two top-25 teams this season with wins this week: Baylor on Wednesday in Lubbock and now Texas in Austin.
The Red Raiders (10-4 Big 12) are a game back of Kansas (10-2 Big 12) in the conference standings, tied with Baylor, and two games ahead of Texas (8-6) with four games left to go in the regular season.
While Tech did not start the first half with the ball, they did score first.
On the first Texas Tech defensive stand, senior Kevin Obanor got a block down lowthat led to a Tech score in transition.
Obanor finished with only six points tonight, making one three-pointer and getting the rest at the line, and that seemed to be the story of the game.
It was an extremely defensive game the entire time. Texas was unable to hit some open threes and Tech couldn’t get it going either.
Despite the lack of scoring at the beginning of the game, the Red Raiders ended with three players in double digits. Super senior Bryson Williams finished with 17, junior Clarence Nadolny had 14 and super senior Adonis Arms rounded it out with 10.
But what seemed to be the difference maker in the game was what was happening off the court. The Red Raider faithful showed out in masses upon masses. They were leading “Raider Power” and “defense” chants throughout the entire game.
Coach Adams was asked about the impact that the fans had on the game he said, “It didn’t feel as much as a road game as it usually does.”
For those ranking college basketball fanbases, if you do not have Texas Tech at the top, you are insane.
As for the rest of the first half, Batcho played great defense. The Longhorns were consistently running screens to get Carr matched up with Batcho on the perimeter. Batcho was able to not only stand his ground but lock up Carr and not allow any points when he was assigned the smaller guard.
In fact the Red Raiders did not allow Carr to score the entire game after he scored 18 in Lubbock earlier this month, and the game was tied 28-28 going into halftime.
Coming out of the locker room to start the second half, Tech was really able to open it up inside.
Shannon found Williams over the top for an easy two early, and they were able to exploit that a few more times over the course of the half.
Tech still did not shoot well from deep in the second half, going 2-for-9 compared to Texas’ 5-for-15.
Tech was able to overcome this imbalance through rebounding and getting the the foul line. They were about even with Texas on the glass in the first but then were able to outrebound Texas by a healthy margin to give the Red Raiders more scoring opportunities and help them run the clock.
At one point, the Longhorns were down 10 and seemed to be out of it, but they battled back and brought it to one with about 1:40 left in the game.
Despite this late charge, the Red Raiders were able to hold off the Longhorns and end up winning the game by a score of 61-55.
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