Texas Tech Hoops | VTM Staff Weekly Roundtable (Week #11)

We are playing close games in every Big 12 game this year so far. It is great that we are being so competitive in each conference matchup. WVU has won twice against us this year, and I think it is a combination of things that they do on the court to always edge by us at the end of the game. Who in our challenging Big 12 conference games ahead do you think we matchup the best with, and who are we at a disadvantage against and why?

Seth - Seems like there are a lot of ranked teams remaining on the schedule. As of right now, there are 10 ranked teams of the remaining 12 games, although Baylor will most likely drop out of the national rankings and I suppose Oklahoma could do the same.

The cool thing about how this team has performed is that they don't back down from any other opponents and they can keep pace with just about any team. I do wish they could play better defense, but that's just not in the cards and I think that Smith is playing with the hand dealt to him.

So, to answer your question, I think that Texas Tech can keep pace with most teams at home, excluding Kansas and Oklahoma St. I think those teams are clearly at the top and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they easily handled Texas Tech on the road and at home.

MikeTTU - This is a tough one. The obvious answer here seems to be TCU, with a "forming a program" stage like us and at our house. They have some good players, but aren't consistent. Another one is Texas. They don't really have an super stars on their team, and their offense consist of just ball movement on the outside or pass it to Ridley on the inside. Reminded me a lot of Orlando back when Howard played there. The toughest one then would be Kansas, with a crazy athletic and nimble Embiid (who is impossible to block) and Wiggins who is not only a scorer, but a great teammate that gets people open.

DanSwany - West Virginia has a spectacular backcourt with their guards being the star players of the team Juwan Staten, Eron Harris, and Terry Henderson. We can hang with them, but their guards have the edge over us in games. Against Baylor PG Kenny Chery killed us for 22 points, but we still won the game because we held the other guards in check. Had Brady Heslip been hitting his threes (0-5) it would have been a different game. In the UT loss the only players on their team that scored double-figures were guards Isaiah Taylor and Javan Felix.

The point I am making is that teams with good guards are giving us trouble. Iowa State is the only game that I feel our frontcourt looked somewhat outmatched along with our backcourt. But we still had a better points in the paint score against ISU with 34-32. Tech handled TCU guards no problem, and played an ugly game still to come away with a double-digit victory.

Teams we matchup well with that remain on our schedule is everyone except Oklahoma State, we are mismatched against OSU. I think their guards are too tough and will run us out of the arena. Other than OSU we have a shot to be in the game each and every time we hit the court unless our frontcourt is completely shutdown and doesn’t play consistently well like they always do. It’s all about the backcourt defense with our team, I think we match up good with everybody else in the conference. That means if we have a strong frontcourt performance like we usually do it will be a good game even against Kansas (though their talent level far exceeds ours). I’m not saying we will win any of these games, just that we matchup well with every team except OSU.