In a heartbreaking game where the rebounding and second chance points got out of hand fast, the Texas Tech men’s basketball team came up short to the UCF Golden Knights on the road 88-80. Head coach Grant McCasland discussed his thoughts on the dominance from UCF’s physicality (via Texas Tech Sports Network/Learfield)

UCF’s Dominant Effort

Despite the fact the Red Raiders finished the game with 80 points, it was a stark contrast in terms of the battle on the boards. The Knights finished with 21 second chance points off 13 offensive rebounds, compared to Texas Tech’s 5 second shot opportunities to 4 offensive boards. McCasland took ownership in the preparation process with no midweek game following the win over Houston, and once again took in how life in the Big 12 is never easy.

“We just didn’t start the game well enough competitively, defensively, rebounding well enough. They beat us to 50:50 balls, we looked a step slow. It was my fault I didn’t have us ready for this one. I should’ve had better practices this week going into it. Used it for rest and I did think we were primed for it, but give them all the credit because I thought they were more aggressive the whole game. I’m talking more aggressive driving to the basket, getting to the free throw line, guarding us, and when we needed to start the game with more purpose we didn’t and we gave them a lot of life. They made shots early, they scored off offensive rebounds, and we were on our heels from the beginning. In a road environment every game is different. You just can’t look at it and say it’s the same thing. This one specifically to me is they’re a confidence team and they can really score. So you don’t want to give them good looks. You don’t want to give them momentum. You don’t want to give them juice. You want to make it hard on them from the beginning and we weren’t able to do that.”

Defensive Fatigue

Texas Tech knew this was a talented roster all across the board. Right off the bat UCF had 5 guys on the floor that can score. Therefore, the Red Raiders were expecting a dogfight no matter what. Even though the defense has been showing signs of improvement as the season progressed, McCasland still feels there’s a long way to go to reach the ceiling they want defensively.

“Our individual defense has been improving, but it’s not a strength of ours. We’re a good team defense when we’re in ball screen coverages and we can guard in multiple attack points, and then we’re good. We had some really pivotal mistakes early in this game where competitively we gave up angles which you don’t want to make it easier for people and we did. Then when we finally did make them miss, they were beating us to every basketball. The ball would bounce off our hands all over the place. We just weren’t competitively right, and that’s on me. I used it in a way that I felt like gave us a best chance for this stretch run, but obviously we didn’t have the edge we needed to going into this one. I thought we were mature enough to handle it the way we did. We stemmed it, and we’re looking at it like “hey, let’s see what we got in the second half.” and we played even more fatigued it looked like in stretches. We got to get better, and that’s going to be the name of the game no matter what. I think this exposed us in a way that we feel good about what you’re doing, and showed us that we’re one of those teams that will always be and every team is that you got to play with an edge.”

Preparing for Kansas And Fast

With a quick turnaround for the Red Raiders come Monday hosting the Kansas Jayhawks, McCasland wants his guys prepared to be on their A-game and not let this loss live rent free in their heads.

“That’s what I just said to them. Nobody was looking ahead for any game I can tell you that much. I just think we showed up to this one kind of wanting to feel it out, and play the game to let it come to us, and that’s not any Big 12 game. I mean you better go attack from the beginning defensively and offensively and we were on our heels. I thought it came back to bite us as the game went on, because they played with more confidence. Ultimately people have respect for what we do. It’s not like you’re going to come out here and get somebody’s B-game, and I thought give them all the credit because they were more physical than we were. They kept scoring and when they needed a big play they came up with it.”

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