Raiders’ road struggles continue in loss to K-State

BY JEFF WALKER l A-J SPORTS EDITOR

MANHATTAN, Kan. — Despite compiling an 0-7 road record, the Texas Tech men’s basketball team has been competitive this season in nearly every contest away from Lubbock.

The Red Raiders (12-12, 2-7 Big 12 Conference) played like a winless road team on Wednesday, though, and Kansas State played like one of the hottest teams in the Big 12.

The Wildcats (17-7, 6-4) ran their winning streak to six with an 85-73 victory at Bramlage Coliseum that wasn’t as close as the final margin of victory.

“It’s just like the Nebraska game, the Stanford game, the Texas game,” Tech head coach Pat Knight said about three other games — two at home — in which the team got off to a slow start. “In this league, or really against anybody, you can’t get off to a start like that. (Kansas State) is playing the best, I think, in this league and you give them momentum, the crowd gets into it. We stressed all week the importance of the first five minutes … We show up in the second half, but then it’s too late.”

Tech closed the game on a 19-2 run as Nick Okorie appeared to regain his shooting touch by hitting three 3-pointers in the final 4:11.

“When you give a good shooter a clean look, it’s like giving a good hitter a meatball right over the middle of the plate,” K-State head coach Frank Martin said.

Tech’s problems this season have been reoccurring — poor defense, poor passing, poor shooting. In most of the other games this season, the Red Raiders’ didn’t dig too deep of a hole to be out of the game.

The hole at Bramlage Coliseum resembled the Grand Canyon as Tech was down by 10 at the 15:30 mark, by 20 at the 9:18 mark and by as many as 26 in the first half.

Tech’s problems started quickly as K-State’s Denis Clemente attempted two open 3-pointers — making one — in the first minute of the game, prompting Knight to call timeout.

“I saw it coming. I told them, ‘Here we go gentleman. They’re going to have you down by 20 before you know it,’” Knight said. “We told them we wanted to take away all threes. We wanted to stay on (Jacob) Pullen and Clemente and face guard them. We give up those threes and I call timeout and I’m like, ‘Gentlemen, here it goes.’ They just weren’t listening to what we wanted done, and before you know it we’re down 20.”

The Wildcats finished the first half 7 of 15 (46.7 percent) from beyond the arc, but the damage wasn’t limited to K-State’s outside shooting.
Tech helped K-State by committing 11 first-half turnovers, many coming on bad passes.

John Roberson, who was scoreless in the first half, committed two of Tech’s first three turnovers on bad passes. Robert Lewandowski also threw away a pass in the first three minutes.

Okorie threw away passes on back-to-back possessions, one coming on an outlet pass trying to start a fast break, and the other coming when he got caught in the air under the Tech basket.

Of the Red Raiders’ first seven turnovers, only one came via something other than a bad pass — Darko Cohadarevic was whistled for an offensive foul.

On the rare occasion that Tech didn’t turn over the ball, the Red Raiders couldn’t get in sync on offense, missing 12 of their first 16 shots.

Tech finally put together a solid offensive spurt in the final 3:36 of the opening half, but the Red Raiders trailed 35-12 at that point. They nearly matched K-State point for point before the break.

After trailing 49-25 at halftime, Knight went to a similar lineup that Tech started the season with, when the Red Raiders tried to play at a faster pace — Roberson, Alan Voskuil, D’walyn Roberts, Okorie and Lewandowski.

Knight later went with a big lineup that featured the 6-foot-10 Lewandowski on the floor at the same time as 7-footer Esmir Rizvic.

Neither lineup was able to help Tech climb out of the Grand Canyon until the final five minutes when the game was out of reach.

“They shot 27 free throws and didn’t shoot many (7 of 11) in the first half,” Martin said. “What that tells me is that we just stood around and fouled in the second half. … You’ve got to play the right way for all 40 minutes, not just 24 or 28.”

The Red Raiders played this way against one of the hottest teams in the conference, and their next game — also on the road — will be against the hottest team in the Big 12. Tech plays at No. 2 Oklahoma (24-1, 10-0) on Saturday.

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