Kansas Basketball Previews: Texas Tech

In an alternate timeline I am writing this preview while remarking that Texas Tech is probably both jealous of our basketball coach and our football coach. I'm also hopefully dating Tiffani Amber Thiessen in that timeline, but I digress.

If the team didn't look motivated for the Oklahoma game, they'll have a tough time getting up for the Red Raiders. Fortunately it shouldn't matter one way or the other, even if Texas Tech usually plays us tough in Lubbock. To put it simply, Texas Tech is awful. They rank 211th in adjusted offense and 199th in adjusted defense.

That's not to say they don't do some things well though:

Texas Tech has played an awful schedule (334th non conference) so take these stats with a grain of salt, but they have a 53.3% eFG, which is 40th in the entire country. Texas Tech doesn't shoot many threes, just 25% of their attempts from the field, but they are converting at nearly 40% from beyond the arc. Ty Nurse has taken the most threes on the team (54) and made 41% of them. He and Javarez Willis (36%) will be the two to keep a close eye on from outside.

Texas Tech shoots a large majority of its shots from two, and they are fairly proficient at doing so, converting at a 51.8% clip. They also get to the line a lot, which, given that they are 111th in effective height, points to them taking advantage of lesser competition. Kansas does foul quite a but, but with only one player taller than 6'7" I don't think the Red Raiders will have their say inside.

The two main things keeping Tech from having a passable offense are turnovers (25%, 323rd) and offensive rebounds (28%, 296th). Defensively Tech sends its opponents to the line a lot a lot a lot so I foresee a lot of points at the line for both Robinson and Withey.

Major jinx alert here, but I would be shocked at an upset. KenPom has KU at 95% to win, and this is the type of game where, even on the road, I would be disappointed with anything less than a 20 point win.