Followup act

Pat Knight doesn’t begin his postgame press conferences with a prepared speech the way many college basketball coaches do.

But before taking questions after Saturday night’s game, the Texas Tech basketball coach took a moment to congratulate the school’s football team on its 41-13 win against Oklahoma and coach Mike Leach on breaking the school’s career win record.

“It kind of gave us some motivation for this game tonight,” Knight said. “We watched it here, and I thought it was great for Mike and those
seniors to end it that way.”

Knight said Spike Dykes, the Tech football coach whose record Leach broke Saturday, wrote him a letter in 2008 when he took over as head basketball coach. Knowing both of them, Knight said of “Spike and Mike,” “You couldn’t ask for two better guys to be on top of your all-time wins record.”

He said the crowd from the football game spilled into United Spirit
Arena, and he wanted to make sure the success continued as well.

“You don’t want to let them down,” Knight said. “If they show up, you want to have a good game for them after they saw a good one earlier. I just thought it was a good weekend overall for the university.”

Work needed

Texas Tech had six fewer rebounds than Lamar, leaving both players and coaches saying the team has work to do in the paint.

D’walyn Roberts, who finished with a team-high nine rebounds for Tech, said the team knows rebounding was a weakness last year and focuses on it in practice. Yet it’s still a work in progress.

“We do a lot of drills in practice, and it helps us in the game,” Roberts said. “That’s one of the main things I’ve got to do, just get as many as I can.”

Road woes

After its first two games, Lamar was averaging 80.8 percent free-throw shooting.

On Saturday, the Cardinals made just 37.5 percent.

Lamar coach Steve Roccaforte said he can’t figure out what the team’s problem has been converting at the foul line on the road, but when it traveled to Middle Tennessee earlier in the week, the team made just 47.5 percent from the line.

“We’re not spending less time on it or stressing it less,” Roccaforte said. “I can’t think we’re going to shoot 80 percent at home and 40 on the road.”

Quote of the game

“I think they see now you can have a bad night offensively, and if you play defense you’re always in the game. I think they like that. It’s happened to us a few games now that we’ve actually maintained leads at the half from our defense, even though we haven’t been shooting it well.”

— Tech coach Pat Knight

Compiled by Courtney Linehan