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The best part of this game is that Texas Tech looked like the team that I envisioned them being all year. Whether it be Jordan Tolbert or Jaye Crockett leading this team with lots of buckets around the basket. A team that passes well and doesn't turn the ball over. A team that gets enough from their guards to be effective. Just a fun game to watch.
Jordan Tolbert and Dejan Kravic were the stars of the game. Kravic was nearly unstoppable on the block and what a move by Walker to get Kravic on the top of the key to take advantage of his passing ability to the post to Tolbert. Just some beautiful alley-oop passes from Kravic. And Tolbert missed one shot the entire night, but he shot 10 times, which means he dropped 22 points, 6 boards, 1 block, 1 steal and 3 turnovers. Just a terrific game overall. He was athletic and TCU didn't have an answer. Kravic was terrific all over the court and the high-low look was something that we saw a lot of last year, but not so much this year. Loved it. Kravic had 16 points, 11 boards, 3 assists, 1 block and 1 turnover.
And these were perfect amounts of Josh Gray, Dusty Hannahs and Ty Nurse. Just perfect. Nurse isn't great, but he's good for 22 minutes and when he not asked to guard opposing point guards and when he's just asked to shoot outside. He looked great and made two three-point shots that were huge shots, one at the end of the half. I'd be fine with Hannahs taking more shots, but this is okay. Not over-exposed, actually took a couple of shots inside the arc and scored 5 points (he's got to work on his overall game as he had 3 turnovers and nothing else in the box score). Maybe my favorite game from Gray. Gray ran the team, took only 6 shots and made 4, finishing with 11 points, 6 assists, 3 steals and 2 turnovers. Just a terrific game-managing game.
And there is a very soft spot in my heart for Walker. He's a good guy and he always compliments the opposing team and he always says nice and inspiring things. He's a good guy and the photo on the quotes link is terrific. I'm happy for him. Nice job taking advantage of the relatively thin frontcourt bench of TCU and that was was swayed the game.
QUOTES
Head coach Chris Walker:
First of all I want to make sure that TCU knows they played hard today. I thought that was a good game, both teams are at the bottom of the league right now but that’s just reality, and I knew it was going to be a dog-fight game because I don’t thing we are that far from each other and Coach Johnson is a great coach, I have a lot of respect for him and he’s a competitor, and I thought our guys just made plays today and rebounded the ball well enough and I think we still need to get to the foul line more and make more shots from the foul line. But four-from-nine from three, we just played with poise and again I continuously tell our guys not to look at the scoreboard because that’s not where we are at right now, but at our effort and things that lead toward winning, like diving on the floor for loose balls and assists, or hitting open men and rebounding, and not giving teams second-chance points. It’s our belief inside our program that if you do those things you don’t have to talk about winning because you’re going to win games because you are doing things that lead to it. I thought our bigs played great, we had a great scouting report, we threw it inside and we had to take advantage of them because they can’t foul and Jordan Tolbert and Dejan Kravic did a great job of that today and played well together and I thought Josh Gray did a good job of distributing the ball and all I care about is that our team is the best it can be at the end of the season.