Singletary leads Red Raiders to easy win

By Courtney Linehan on November 19th, 2009 12 Comments Printer-Friendly

Mike Singletary looked at teammate Theron Jenkins and thought he saw LeBron James.
Singletary spent Wednesday night watching film of the Cavalier. When he saw Jenkins loop around for an ally-oop pass, he imagined himself dishing to the King.
The pass flew out of bounds.

Texas Tech's Mike Singletary (32) takes a shot over Northwestern State's Dominic Knight during their game Thursday night at United Spirit Arena. Singletary scored 25 points, leading Tech to a 94-75 win.

“I realized it was Theron and I was like, ‘Oh, he can’t jump as high as LeBron,’” Singletary said. “’That’s a terrible pass. Get me out of the game.’”
One bad pass couldn’t ruin an otherwise impressive performance, as Singletary finished with 25 points, 17 of them in the first half, in Tech’s 94-75 win against Northwestern State on Thursday.

While the Red Raiders rolled to 4-0 on the season, the offense came in spurts.
Tech trailed by as much as six points in the first half, with Northwestern State shooting 46.9 percent from the field.

The Demons led by one with 6 minutes, 10 seconds left in the first half when Singletary made a layup to make it 33-32 Tech. It sparked a stretch in which Singletary scored 14 points to close the half, as the Red Raiders won the stretch 19-12.

“We started off slow, real, real slow,” Singletary said. “We weren’t attacking the bucket; we were just playing lazy. That’s the reason the game was close like that. Then with about 6 minuted left, Coach (Pat Knight) brought us in, we were in the huddle, and said we got to get it going. There’s no way they should be in the game with us.”

Knight said he was disappointed with Tech’s defense in the first 20 minutes, giving up 44 points, including 12 each by Damon Jones and James Hulbin. He told his team before the game not to allow any 3-point shots, and Northwestern State made 4-of-5 attempts in the first half.

He attributed it to a little bit of an inflated ego after rolling past three opponents in last weekend’s Duel in the Desert tournament.

“I was not pleased with our defense the first half, but the kids had a great weekend,” Knight said. “Everybody’s been sitting around telling them what a great start. We were a little full of ourselves to start the game, so you have to battle that. I think they thought it was going to be easy for us.”

Tech allowed only 31 points after the break, and Knight said he saw significant improvement from the defense. The Raiders forced 12 turnovers and had 10 steals.
While this was Tech’s second-highest score of the season, Knight said he’s not too concerned with keeping the offense on a roll, knowing it will come along with the defense.

“I like where we are offensively but I don’t pay much attention to it because I want to establish us as a defensive team,” he said. “There aren’t going to be nights where you score points like this in the Big 12, so you better be able to guard somebody.”

To comment on this story:
courtney.linehan@lubbockonline.com uE06C 766-8735
terry.greenberg@lubbockonline.com uE06C 766-8700

Bookmark and Share

Comments

Trackbacks

There are no trackbacks



Recent Archives
Recent Comments
Lubbock Online