I was fortunate enough to be able to travel with the team to Lubbock this weekend. Just some random thoughts:
-Evidently this is a thing in college hoops when you travel but at the shoot around on Friday afternoon we cycled through the lineup 4 times shooting half court shots. Whatever number road game it is you try to make that many half court shots. If you needed one, Johnny Holmes would be the guy…think he hit three of them. Whole exercise seemed a bit strange.
-We got to the game at 3:30 so there was plenty of watching pregame warmups. Had a feeling Moretti was going to be an issue. At one point he hit 14 straight threes. He is is obviously really solid but he’ll struggle against better guards. I saw a Hannahs comparison, which isn’t way off by any means, but Hannahs had/has a lot more athleticism and range.
-Not sure if this is a positive or negative in regards to Chris Beard but we weren’t overly impressed with the Tech roster, beyond Culver there’s just not a lot of athleticism. Their guards really struggled with our guards’ quickness in the first half. Of course the other side of that is that he’s getting the most out of his roster.
-Might’ve been our best defensive half of the season in the first half.
-Our bench went nuts on the running the baseline no call. I could hear Mike and the official’s conversation about it and I have no idea is this is legit but the explanation for the no call was that on their first attempt to inbound we were called for a kick. According to the official, that infraction on us then gave them the ability to run the baseline. Mike wasn’t buying it.
-The call at the end was to try to get a quick score (which was the right call since their rim protector had fouled out). If you watch the replay you’ll see that we get Gafford isolated 1v1 early in the play and for whatever reason, Jalen didn’t feed him. The play deteriorated from there.
-Mike was very much Chris Beard’s equal in terms of in game coaching on Sat. It took a combination of poor FT shooting and some outstanding shot making for Tech to build the lead and hang on in the second half.
-Sat with Isaiah Joe’s dad, who drove the 7hrs to Lubbock to come watch his son play. Unfortunately, it might’ve been his worst game of the season. He just didn’t have it, but he really played some solid D on Culver in the latter parts of the game.
-Tech does a really good job getting the students into the game. The have a student lounge that they can go in and grab some free food, the spirit squads keep them loud and engaged in timeouts. The students have two big sections, one behind the visitor bench and one behind the goal we played on in the second half. They are right on the floor too. At the end of the game all students are invited onto the floor, which kind of freaked us out. The do it in an orderly fashion but the players and coaches stick around on the floor and celebrate with the students. Pretty sure the SEC doesn’t allow that.
-The started serving beer at the arena after Jan 1 and the bump in revenue has been so large that they have dropped the prices of regular concessions. Hot dogs, popcorn, and soft drinks are $2, nachos were $3, a bottle of water was $2 or $3. We could take a few notes…
-Despite the close miss and the late night, Mike and the staff all took the time to thank all us for coming along and supporting all of them. Classy all the way around. The whole experience gave me a new appreciation for Mike and the staff.
-Bout all I can think of for now.