Landry Fields thought he glimpsed an open path to the basket. Trailing by two points with less than 10 seconds before halftime, Stanford’s star worked through the paint, laid the ball up, then watched his shot switch trajectory.

Turns out Brad Reese saw the opening, too. The Texas Tech swingman blocked the shot, flew downcourt and in the final second scored on a fast-break layup that gave Tech a 42-38 lead at the game’s midway point.

“He’s a gamer,” coach Pat Knight said of Reese. “He’s used to making the big shots. Before that length-of-the-floor layup we were playing lethargic. That energized us.”

Tech won 100-87 on Tuesday, adding the Cardinal to a growing list of teams it’s upstaged during nonconference play. Reese finished with 13 points, two assists and that block, one of his best performances of the season for the No 23 Red Raiders (10-1). Yet his season-high 29 minutes defending Fields, Stanford’s leading scorer, mattered most.

Brad Reese followed a twisting path to Texas Tech, and now that he's here, he's learning to change his game from high scorer in junior college to doing whatever is needed to win at the Division I level.(Associated Press)

Brad Reese's layup just before halftime provided a spark for the Red Raiders on their way to a 100-87 win against Stanford on Tuesday.(Zach Long/Avalanche-Journal)

The unlikely Red Raider – “I never thought I’d be at Texas Tech,” he says – became a junior college All-American by averaging more than 16 points per game at Florida’s Gulf Coast Community College. He committed to both LSU and Oklahoma State before finally signing with Tech last fall.

No longer his team’s leading scorer or even a starter, Reese says he’s learning to fill one need, rather than all of them, each time Tech takes the court.

“I’ve got to get juco out of my head,” Reese said. “I was a 1,000-point scorer in two years there. At this level, it’s not all about points.”

Reese developed into a Division I player because his high schools didn’t offer football; he says it left more time for hoops. He averaged 24.9 points and 14 rebounds per game during his senior season at Laurel Hill School, a K-12 school in Florida, then signed to play in the Southland Conference for Southeastern Louisiana. He redshirted the 2006-07 season, then transferred to Gulf Coast when the coach who recruited him left.

At Gulf Coast, Reese became the main event. His success as a redshirt freshman drew attention from Iowa State; the Cyclones hoped he’d sign that year and play three seasons in Ames.

“I loved his attitude,” Iowa State coach Greg McDermott said. “He’s kind of a no-nonsense kid. He’s very eager to learn about the game of basketball and take his game to another level.”

Reese returned to Gulf Coast for his sophomore season, expecting to spend another year as the junior college star. He stopped by coach Jay Powell’s office to deliver the news he’d be back, but instead learned he’d have to share the spotlight; Powell had signed another Division-I swingman in Georgia’s Marquis Gilstrap.

Gilstrap and Reese spent last season trading turns as Gulf Coast’s leading scorer; they averaged a combined 39.3 points per game.

At the same time, Reese reopened his college search. He kept ISU on his short list, largely because Gilstrap had already committed there. He clicked with LSU coach Trent Johnson and orally committed to the Tigers. Johnson pulled Reese’s scholarship offer when he took an official visit to Oklahoma State, and soon Reese was telling the Cowboys he would play for them.

Then even that changed when he learned OSU recruited other players at his position, leading him to wonder how much playing time he would get there.

In the end, Powell’s relationship with Tech assistant Chris Beard led Reese to Lubbock.

“He was ready to get it over with, but he just couldn’t make a decision,” Gilstrap said. “He used to tell me all the time: ‘The next two years are the most important years of our life.’ It just took him a little longer than it took me to decide where to spend them.”

Shortly after Reese and the four other newcomers arrived in Lubbock for summer school and off-season conditioning Knight received a phone call saying “I think Brad might have quit today.” Reese moved here from Florida around the time his son, Jayden, was born. He says that added to the stress of starting at a new school and on a new team that had already taken him far from home.

Strength coach Chris Braden said the first weeks of conditioning are often the most difficult transition to Big 12 basketball, particularly for athletes who competed in the top junior college leagues, as Reese did.

They know what to expect on the court. In the weight room, though, it’s another story.

“It was really, really difficult, and not just physically,” Braden said. “The grind of the summer can get to you as well. It’s daily, it’s very difficult, and they have to learn to work through that physically and mentally.”

Braden said he followed Reese’s particularly stressful workouts with phone calls promising things would become easier. It helped to have Gilstrap going through a similarly tough transition to the Big 12. But there were days Reese wasn’t certain he’d be able to get through.

Reese says he tried to rush through summer workouts, eager to get back to his comfortable role as team star. Yet as he watched the rest of the Raiders on the court and in the weight room, it sunk in that he wasn’t going to be that standout talent on a team with so much athleticism and basketball experience.

He admits Knight’s demand for defense tripped him up early this season. He forgot to rebound in the Raiders’ second game, a seven-point win against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, because he still worried about putting up points.

By the Washington game he’d adjusted enough to score a season-high 17 points with his son watching from the stands, and his family watching on ESPN2.

Holding Fields to 40 percent field-goal shooting and helping Tech close its win against Stanford showed Reese, and the Raider nation, that his defense can be as beneficial as his offense.

“As you get older you get wiser,” Reese said. “You realize it’s a different level. The talent level is higher here, so if I’ve just got to play defense tonight, that’s what I’ve got to do.

“Sometimes you might not be the best player on the court, and you have to realize that and play your part.”