Wichita St. hands Texas Tech first loss
December 20, 2009
WICHITA, Kan. (AP)—Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall was too drained tothoroughly enjoy beating No. 16 Texas Tech on Saturday night.
And there was that one number on the stat sheet that made him take pause.
“They scored 62 points in the second half,” Marshall said, rubbing hisforehead after an 85-83 win. “That has to be a record against one of myteams.”
Indeed, the Red Raiders rallied as hard as they could to overcome a 35-21halftime deficit and even led briefly in the second half, helped by JohnRoberson’s 24 points and four other double-figure scorers. But it wasn’t enoughto keep Texas Tech from falling to 9-1.
Wichita State (10-1) was 28 of 35 (80 percent) from the foul line, includinghitting all 11 it took in the final 65 seconds, to hang on to the victory.Clevin Hannah scored 24 points, and J.T. Durley added a career-high 20 to gowith 10 rebounds.
Durley scored 14 of his points in the first half to help the Shockers buildtheir lead.
“I don’t know if we were tight, rusty or what, but we just couldn’t hit abucket in the first half,” Texas Tech coach Pat Knight said. “We were justmore aggressive in the second half.”
That was evident. Five points from Roberson helped the Red Raiders score 10of the second half’s first 14 points. Even after the Shockers pushed the leadback to 11, Roberson’s 3-pointer and Nick Okorie’s slam cut the Wichita Statelead to 44-39 with just less than 13 minutes left.
Okorie scored 16 points, Singletary finished with 13 and David Tairu had 11.
With 8:24 to play, Tech’s D’Walyn Roberts broke loose for a layup andconverted it into a three-point play that made it 53-53 Wichita State.
The Red Raiders took their first lead in more than 20 minutes on Tairu’sjumper and pushed their advantage to four, 61-57, on a Roberson 3-pointer andSingletary free throw.
“They were hard to stop,” Marshall said. “They were really pushing it intransition. They’ve got some great athletes, and they exploited that.”
Hannah sparked the biggest moments of the game for the Shockers. Durley’smissed free throw was rebounded by Wichita State, and Garrett Stutz made thefirst of two free throws. When Stutz missed his second, another offensiverebound led to Hannah’s tying 3-pointer.
One possession later, Hannah buried a baseline 3-pointer. When Stutzfollowed with two more free throws 22 seconds later, it was 66-61 Wichita State.
Marshall said the rebounded foul shots were huge.
“Those are effort plays,” Marshall said,” and effort plays can make thedifference in a game like this. And they came at a time when things weren’tgoing our way.”
The Red Raiders did cut the lead to three twice in the final 30 seconds, butHatch and Hannah answered with free throws. A turnaround 3-pointer by Tairu cutWichita State’s lead to 85-83 with 1 second on the clock, but the Shockers threwthe inbound pass to Durley on the far end of the court to seal the victory.
The first half was nothing like the second half. A grudge-match pace wasestablished early, and neither team made a field goal in the first 4 minutes.
Wichita State could not find much offense outside of Durley for most of thefirst half, and he scored nine of the Shockers’ first 11 points.
The real trouble for both teams in the first half was turnovers—each had11. Singletary had six of those, including two during a 12-1 run that pushedWichita State’s lead to 21-14 with 5:16 left in the half.
Texas Tech closed within 21-18 on Tairu’s stickback, but the Shockers closedthe half with a 14-3 run that included 3-pointers from Durley and Hannah. On itsfinal possession of the half, Graham Hatch airballed a 3-pointer that went toDurley for an easy layup.
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