On Wednesday, the Texas Tech basketball team returned to United Supermarket Arena for the first time since Nov. 16. Grant McCasland’s team played its best home game of the year with an 87-58 victory over Omaha, improving to 6-2 overall.
However, it’s difficult to know how much this performance will translate into the rest of the season. The Mavericks are a really scary team.
Omaha is one of the worst teams in the nation, ranking only 256th out of 362 teams in the KenPom.com rankings. The Mavericks, currently 5-5 on the season and 0-4 on the road, have just one win against a Division I team this year.
Still, when a terrible team shows up on your schedule, you better beat them soundly, and that’s what Tech did. Tech jumped out to a 42-22 lead at halftime and easily put the game out of reach in the first half.
The match was a nice reprieve for the team after a tough four-game series against high-quality opponents, all of which were played at home and the remaining three were played in other countries. So let’s break down the stats and see what we can get out of this big win.
Kerwin Walton had one of Texas Tech’s few scoring opportunities.
The story of this game was Kerwin Walton, who scored 22 points, the most ever for a Red Raider. In fact, this was the first 20-point game in his college career, including two seasons at North Carolina.
Known as a dangerous 3-point shooter, Walton lived up to that reputation Wednesday by going 6-7 from beyond the arc. Despite coming off the bench, he led the team with an overall record of 8 wins and 9 losses.
It’s clear that Coach McCasland wants to give Walton plenty of opportunities to prove himself worthy of being a part of the regular rotation. The head coach doesn’t have many options.
After last week’s overtime loss to Butler, Coach McCasland said he needed to give his starters more rest during games and lengthen their rotations so they didn’t run out of gas during games like they did against Indianapolis. Told. . For that to happen, either Walton or Lamar Washington will need to play meaningful minutes. But by Wednesday, neither had done so.
When Walton appeared in games that year, he only scored three points per game. So his 22-point outburst was surprising, even against a bad opponent.
Last year, Walton led the team with 17 points against LSU. Tech may need to play more games like that against teams from major conferences this season in order to become a tournament team. However, it’s encouraging to see one of the reserve guards come off the bench to score 20 points for the Red Raiders in the last two games, following Chance McMillan’s 24 points against Butler.
This is a great sign for a team that has pretty much lived on what its starting pitchers have provided for most of the year. Hopefully, Walton can build on this good performance and become a reliable eighth member of Tech’s rotation.