Texas Tech Hoops | Shooting Breakdown of the SEOKSU Game

I did not get to watch the SE Oklahoma State game, but read the great recap that MikeTTU wrote up. It was not hard to realize from his article (and the score) that our Texas Tech team had a tough first showing in their exhibition opener. Without seeing film to breakdown the shooting, you may want to go check out the stats by clicking this link... BOX SCORE.

Scroll down to the 12th page and I’ll help you read a basketball shot chart if you have never filled one out before while watching a game. It is a chart of all the shots taken by Texas Tech throughout the entire game. A circle around the player’s number represents a make; no circle around it represents a miss. Left side of the court is 1st half, right side is 2nd half. The layups section on either side represents the dunks (and layups) for each half. The bottom is self-explanatory stats.

So, my breakdown based off the shot chart shows Texas Tech has a humongous problem with shots outside of the paint. The 1st half we attempted only 9 shots outside of the paint, and made only 2 of those. 7 of those shots were 3-pointers with only 1 make.

The 2nd half we only attempted 1 outside shot (a miss). The 2nd half shooting chart shows only 5 other shots outside the paint besides the lone 3-point miss.

Let’s summarize, for the game with only 15 shots outside the paint... only 2 were makes! The mid-range shot in college basketball has become a lost art in the game; and the long-range shot is something every team has to be a threat with to keep defenses from stacking up the inside. If Texas Tech does not start working on finding a few shooters that can stretch a defense, then it will not go well when we play teams with a strong frontcourt.

The worrying should not start for Tech fans after one exhibition game win, but if we don’t see a few shooters emerged in the next few games then the bright season outlook I wrote about last week seems to get darker. If a team with a smart coach plays us he will literally tell his team to dare us to shoot from anywhere outside the paint until we start making our shots. He will just have his guys stack down low in the posts and get the rebounds.

Here was a few postgame questions and answers from the official site on the poor shooting…

There was not a lot of three-point shooting tonight, can you tell us a little about that?

Coach Smith - “That was a concern for us. We were one for seven the first half and guys just refused to shoot them the second half. I thought Southeastern, Coach Green had his team go out after us, made us put it on the floor, that’s why we were getting the ball inside, that’s why we were getting fouled because they did a good job of taking away the threes. When we did get inside we wanted to get a high percentage shot, which we did shoot about 48 or 49 percent from the floor but we should have shot a lot better. Again, it was a good test for us and now we got footage to show them.”

What needs to happen for you all to shoot the ball better?

Rob Turner - “Just concentrate, and honestly, just being a better passer. We were passing to some guys some times and it was taking them out of their shots and that really hurts that shot preparation. Can’t get their hands set or their feet set and everything like that, so a better pass will lead to a better shot.”