[11pm]

Tech is heading to New York to play Syracuse after beating Georgia Southern 74-61.

Georgia Southern is a pretty quick team and that gave us a little problem tonight. They really ran down loose balls very well and we made way too many stupid turnovers (I think we were close to 20 in the game) that kept them in the game. Zeno rebounded from his subpar opening game performance to score 28 points and grab 7 rebounds. Jay Jackson fouled out.....had like three offensive push-off fouls called against him that were pretty ticky tack IMO....but still scored 16 points and and hauled in 6 boards. Still room for improvement as these two accounted for 11 turnovers....JJ 6 and Zeno 5. JJ only had one assist as well...not a good ratio.

Freshman Terry Martin had his second straight strong performance contributing 11 point off the bench in probably about 20 min. of playing time. Georgia State played a very active 2-3 zone which did a good job of neutralizing our big guys....Jon Plefka and Darryl Dora scored 6 and 8 points respectively while combining for another 10 boards between them.

Overall....Georgia Southern really competed hard but Tech sure didn't play it's best game. I don't know how many turnovers we committed, but there was a stretch in the second half, as we were getting the game under control, where we committed like four straight turnovers without even getting the ball past halfcourt and letting them close the lead up again. We also had alot of nice passes go out of bounds as the cutter didn't seem ready to recieve the ball.....alot of our zone offense requires timely passing within the middle of the zone and it looked like an early season game in that the timing was off a little.

One of our starting guards, Q White, did not play due to a knee injury suffered yesterday....don't think it's serious, but he did not even dress for the game.

Syracuse will be a tough one to win....although playing against Georgia Southern's zone may turn out to be beneficial since Syracuse likes to play that style of defense as well. Beating the Orangemen in New York will be tough......first away game for all the newbies and all.

 

[KJay]

it won't be that tough man, SU is in a rebuilding year, plus you guys have just enough to frusterate the zone.

 

[Jonathan Watters]

It looks like Knight is going with a short rotation for the moment.

How has Dior Lowhorn looked in his limited minutes thus far?

 

[11pm]

He looked good in game one....not so hot in game two. He had a pass hit his chest and one off his face in a position to score if he catches the ball. He'll be fine.....I think the game is still a little fast for him, but it'll slow down in a couple more weeks and then we'll really see him shine.

 

[Jonathan Watters]

Since the discussion appears to be about Texas Tech, I figured I might as well post an excerpt from Ed Graney's latest column about battle tested teams that made me chuckle.

"I have had teams that had leadership from underclassmen, good teams on occasion," Knight said. "[Ross] was not a born leader. Ronald became a good leader. And I would like to think that in what he did, in that role, our other players looked at and saw and understood that it was important and those kids come forth a little bit this year using Ronald as an example."

Knight was asked recently whether his team had a captain.

"Me," he said.

Good enough.

That sums up Knight fairly accurately, doesn't it?

 

[11pm]

Jackson and Zeno are the leaders of this team....they will be the leaders of next year's team as well. Coach expects alot out of both players and is working with them every day to make into great basketball players.....they seem to be learning pretty well too, as neither was highly regarded out of high school...yet both will make a push for All-Big 12 honors this year.

Coach has had some pretty good players in the past....he knows what he's doing with them.