It might have taken a little longer than wanted, but the Red
Raiders finally were able to accomplish something that they haven’t been able
to do all season on Wednesday night – win a Big 12 Conference game at
home.
Texas Tech (9-8, 2-4 in Big 12 play) entered Wednesday’s meeting
with Iowa State on a four-game skid, but subsequently snapping it with a 56-51
victory inside the United Spirit Arena.
“What I love about these guys is that every single day they come
out with a great attitude,” Tech interim head coach Chris Walker said, “and we
have a young and inexperienced team, that’s what you fight. You fight them
being down about losses and stuff.”
“I said ‘guys, that’s part of our journey, there’s no reason to
be ashamed, I’m going through it with you, it’s my first year and people may
say a lot of things, but perception is we are a young team, there’s a lot we
have to work on, but reality is there’s a lot we can control—and the one
thing we can control is our attitude,’ and that’s what we did tonight. I’m happy
for the guys.”
The Cyclones (13-5, 3-2) entered the game winning seven of their
last eight games, but foul trouble along with struggles in shooting contributed
to the loss.
This was a disappointing loss to The Cyclones, head coach Fred Hoiburg said they had expected to play a lot better than
they did.
“We had really good practices,” he said. “We had a great shoot
around this morning, I fully anticipated coming out and playing a great
basketball game tonight.”
Josh Gray, freshman, led the team in total points, with 16 overall
points. He led the team down the stretch; Coach Walker says it could be because
of him being distraught after the OSU loss.
“There may be times when he makes plays that make me want to
pull the rest of my hair out, but by the same token, he can make some plays
that other guys on the team can’t, and you need a guy out there, no matter
what,” he said. “There are great coaches in this league, I’m not going to out
coach anybody, there’s five final four coaches in this
league. So it’s going to come down to—they know everything we are doing,
somebody is gonna’ have to make a play, and he made
plays tonight that really helped us play the game.”
Gray, leading his team down the stretch and making a big
positive impact on the game for Texas Tech, says what Coach Walker told the
players to concentrate on to win the game.
“Pretty much, coach came into the locker room before the game
and he just told us to play our game and have fun and play with confidence, so
that’s what I did tonight,” he said.
The next Men’s Basketball game will be against UT in Austin,
Texas on January 26th at 7:00 pm.