Texas Tech Red Raiders

With everything on the line, UVA reaches the precipice of immortality Monday night. Both Virginia and Texas Tech are making their first ever appearances in the national title game. Chris Beard and Tony Bennett are two of the brightest young stars in their profession, both eschewing 5-star chasing in favor of building up a roster of veterans with a culture of toughness and unity. This game will be a rock fight under the bright lights; buckle up.

Game Details:

What ‘They’ Say

Depth Chart:

The ABC’s of Texas Tech:

A) Defense. So this is going to be hard for some Hoos to understand, but they actually play, by the numbers, a better defense than UVA. And not just a better defense than UVA this year, but better than any season Tony’s ever coached. KenPom has their #1-ranked Adjusted Defensive efficiency at 83.3 points per 100 possessions. The best Tony’s accomplished were 85.5 (2015) and 85.6 (2018).This year the Hoos have an 88.7 mark (5th nationally this year). We allow fewer points per game, but that’s because we run a much slower pace than they do.

This Red Raiders defense gets it done all over the floor. They’re 2nd nationally in effective field goal % defense, allowing a mere 42.7%. They’re 11th in turnover rate (23%). They’re 5th in block rate (15.6%). Watching them stifle Michigan State’s Top-5 offense was a clinic. There aren’t a lot of weaknesses to talk about, or one particular strength (like Auburn’s ball pressure) that must singularly be overcome. They’re just strong all over the floor.

B) Jarrett Culver is their unequivocal star. The 6’6″ sophomore wing won Big XII Player of the Year honors this year, less than two years after arriving in Lubbock as the 312th-ranked high school recruit, an afterthought 3-star who was the lowest-ranked freshman of Beard’s 6-man 2017 class. He surprised as a freshman, scoring nearly 12 points a game, but this year simply exploded. The downhill oriented wing scored nearly 19 points a game this year, shooting 53% on his 2’s while being the highest-usage player in the entire conference. Culver is very dangerous drawing whistles, was 3rd in the Big XII in fouls drawn per 40 minutes, and he’s averaging about 6 FTAs a game in the NCAAT. He chips in on the glass too, 6.3 a game, pulling in good percentages on both the offensive and defensive end. Add to that his 3.7 assists and 1.4 steals a game (plus the occasional block), and you’ve got an incredibly well rounded player. If he’s got one weakness, his 3P% has dropped from 38% as a freshman to 32% this year, and he’s only 7 of 25 from 3 during the NCAAT (28%), though arguably he’s still got good shooting nights in him.

C) They’ve got a diverse set of role players. Texas Tech made a surprise run to the Elite Eight last season (lost to eventual champion Villanova), and then promptly saw an exodus of their top players to graduation and the pros, headlined by one-and-done Zhaire Smith (#16 overall pick in 2018) to go with four seniors. Only four players returned from that team’s core rotation: starters Culver and Odiase, plus reserves Francis and Moretti. We’ve already mentioned Culver as an out-of-nowhere star, but none of the others were sure-thing recruits either. RS Senior big man Odiase was the #358 recruit in 2014. Edwards was the #160 recruit last summer. Moretti was the lone 4-star of the bunch to start his career in Lubbock, the Bolgona, Italy import arriving as the #98 recruit in 2017.

Transfers make up the rest of this 7-man rotation. 2-guard Brandone Francis, a top-50 recruit in 2014, started his career playing for Mike White at UF, redshirted his freshman year, played one season, then transferred to Lubbock in 2017 when Beard took the job. Grad transfer Matt Mooney played for Air Force and South Dakota, averaging nearly 19 points a game in the Summit League, before arriving in the Big XII this season. Big man Tariq Owens had a similar journeyman track, though one with a power conference flavor, starting as a 3-star recruit at Tennessee and moving to St Johns for two years before choosing to finish his career with Beard.

The end result is a proven and veteran lineup, its Top 7 being led by 4 redshirt seniors and a projected lottery pick wing, which explains why nothing and no one has intimidated them during this postseason run.

Their Season To Date

Texas Tech is 31-6 on the season. They lost only once in the non-conference, to Duke in New York. They went 14-4 in the Big XII regular season, sharing the regular season title. Their losses came in season splits with Kansas, Iowa State, Baylor, and K-State. They were upset in the first round of the Big XII tournament by a 15-and-21 West Virginia.

Texas Tech entered the NCAAT as a 3-seed. After cruising past 14 Northern Kentucky and 6 Buffalo in the opening weekend, the Red Raiders started racking up eye-opening wins. They beat John Beilein’s 2-seeded Michigan by 19, Mark Few and 1-seeded Gonzaga by 6, and in the Final Four used a late run to pull away from Tom Izzo and 2-seeded Michigan State for a 10-point win.

They’ve won 14 of their last 15 contests, the head-scratching hiccup against WVU the only imperfection.

Keys to getting the win:

1) Fouls and free throws. This is most likely going to be a wire-to-wire slug fest. They’re going to make it hard for UVA to score, they’re going to come hard at our defense trying to get us to break down and make the occasional mistake for them to exploit. And when the margin for error is so razor thin, whistles become difference makers.

Virginia has played pretty whistle-free basketball in the tournament this year, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a concern Monday night. The Red Raiders finished 2nd in the Big XII in FT rate, only West Virginia was better at generating trips to the FT line than Texas Tech. Jarrett Culver shot over 200 FTAs this year. PG Moretti shot over 100 and converted on 92% of them. In a game where every shot is contested, Chris Beard is going to scheme to get his players points by any means necessary. Depending on lineups, we could see Ty or Kyle on Culver for stretches (including at the opening tip), and neither of those two can afford to get quick whistles… I expect if Culver sees any of our guards assigned to him, he’s going to go downhill fast and often looking for contact. Seeing as how Ty’s 4th foul on Saturday night corresponded with the start of Auburn’s late run, we can’t afford for our key players to spend time on the bench because of foul trouble.

Oh, and when Virginia gets to the FT line (and the Raiders are occasionally foul prone, let’s hope we can draw a few whistles ourselves), let’s hope we don’t miss 6 of the first 9.

2) Hit the offensive glass hard. Remember how up in the ABC’s, I mentioned that Texas Tech’s defense was almost without weakness? Almost. Texas Tech’s lone mediocre defensive stat category is defensive rebounding, where they finished the year a mere 191st nationally. A jarring stat in West Virginia’s Big XII Tournament upset was the 17 O-Reb’s the Raiders gave up to the Mountaineers. Virginia’s forwards have been pretty effective enabling second chance opportunities, and especially if we go big for some stretches (Ty, Kyle, and Kihei can’t all play 40 minutes, can they?), the Hoos may find that first-look misses against the #1 Defense become opportunistic, and critical, second chance points.

I’m not saying send the house. But send both bigs at a minimum on every shot. Texas Tech isn’t known as a fast break team, not like Auburn was, and sending back 2-3 guards to play transition defense should be adequate, leaving our 4s and 5s free to challenge the Red Raider bigs on the glass.

3) Time for Hunter to shine. He’s a projected Lottery Pick, an All American, but his March resume so far has been hit-or-miss. He’s scored double-digits in every game, but only really broke out in the Gardner-Webb victory (and shouldn’t that have been a given?). It often looks as if he’s not playing with confidence. Part of it is the scheme needs to get him the ball in space so he can work, and running more spreads and ball-screen sets will help. But most worrisome to me has been the disappearance of his 3-point shot. More than once in the Auburn game, the action got him a clean, open look from the perimeter. But rather than take that room-and-rhythm 3, he pump faked then drove, and his defenders never bit on the pump. And why would they? He’s lost confidence in the shot.

Hunter shot 50% from 3 during ACC play. Low-ish attempts, sure, but still, going 24 of 48 over those 18 games was enough to put points on the board, reshape defenses by forcing defenders to honor him, and create hard closeouts for him to drive by and add scores at the rim. But over his last 6 games, Hunter is 5 of 23 (22%). So by contrast, defenses can sag to prevent his drive while also being closer to help position. Not sure what slump-busting magic the coaching staff has available for Hunter this weekend, but getting him some good, early looks from 3 will go a long way to setting up the rest of the offense for sustained success.

Predictions:

Virginia is playing for the basketball national championship. An opportunity even the Ralph teams didn’t achieve. Savor this, for so many reasons. Knowing this is the last game of the year, win or lose, means knowing this is the last time we’re going to see Jack Salt in a UVA uniform, and most likely the last we’ll see of Hunter and Jerome as well (anyone else is too TBD to speculate here). Texas Tech, by contrast, has 5 players playing in their last college basketball game ever. That’s 8 of the two teams’ combined Top 15 going to war one last time, and never with more on the line. Emotions will be intense for players, coaches, and fans alike.

What’s remarkable, in some respects, about UVA being here is that it hasn’t even played complete basketball arguably once in its 5 tournament games. It seems like every game we get enough to get the win, and by all means it’s been an incredible ride. But we have yet to see that “firing on all cylinders” performance like we saw in destructions of Sweet 16-bound Virginia Tech and Florida State in January.

I’m not holding my breath that Texas Tech is the team against whom we rediscover the magic. Texas Tech rolling through the first weekend was no big deal, but when they slaughtered Michigan in the 2-3 game then took down overall-1-seed Gonzaga (the two most recent national runners-up) back to back, I realized they were for real. This team is playing great basketball.

(Qualifier: I’m going to assume Tariq Owens plays and is near 100%. The big man rolled his ankle pretty good against Michigan State, and while he played sparingly down the stretch, he clearly wasn’t fully healthy. But two days for top medical staffs to treat him, combined with the ultimate adrenaline rush of the national title game, I’m betting the athletic forward is there at the end, still battling away.)

But ultimately, I have to have faith in a coach and team that has proven time and again they’re worthy of our faith. For two and a half weeks now, much as it did throughout the regular season, UVA has just found ways to win. We’ve got great guards. We’ve got great forwards. We’ve got a great coach. And I trust that they’re going to go on that court with a good game plan and good focus and take on Texas Tech as effectively as they’ve taken on all comers for the last few years. Who cares if it isn’t pretty, desperate final stands rarely are.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

Hoos Win 54-53