If you were the Texas Tech basketball team – coming off a loss to Iowa State – you made sure to grab an extra helping of black eyed peas on New Year’s Day.
After Tech controlled a 10-point lead going into the break, they unraveled down the stretch. It was a game in which Tech held as much as a 14-point advantage, however, the Cyclones ended the game on a 29-8 run.
The greatest theme around the locker room after the loss?
There are ‘no moral victories’ on a team with five seniors and six juniors that are prepared to win now.
That was at least the thought from Texas Tech’s head coach Chris Beard.
Plus a simple, but fitting diagnosis on what happened from Tech’s junior forward Justin Gray.
“We let up honestly,” Gray said. “We had a pretty comfortable lead and everybody was playing pretty good. Like I said, we were just hoping to win the game with the lead that we had, rather than finishing out games. You know then we had some bonehead mistakes and turnovers, that they converted, and Hilton magic came in. The crowd got crazy, and I just kind of felt we lost our edge.”
“It’s not a strength of mine to find positives in defeat because our expectation was to win,” Beard said. “We played about as well as we could for about 28-32 minutes against Iowa State, and obviously we have a lot to learn from in the last 10 minutes. We’ve got to find a way to have lower turnovers games. It’s easy to talk about, but difficult to do. Especially when you have the best pressing team in college basketball coming in here tomorrow.”
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