Pregaming – Texas Tech

Teams: Oklahoma State (16-11, 4-9) vs. Texas Tech (12-16, 4-9)

For entertainment purposes
Big 12 Network for the Cowboys and Raiders though my internet-watching homies can watch with me on ESPN3 (what did we do before ESPN3?). Neither OSU nor Tech has or will be ranked in any top 25 (and probably top 50) poll this year. For contextualization’s sake OSU is #59 in the RPI while Tech sits at #151. And if you have issues (and they’d have to be some pretty severe issues at this point) OSU is favored by 8.5.

Behind enemy lines
Double T Nation

Homework
I can’t even begin to understand this Tech team. They lost to Colorado at home and then go on the road and hammer a desperate Baylor team, without Singletary nonetheless. Thankfully their program is in far more disarray than OSU’s. If you haven’t seen Pat Knight’s rather expressive comments after that CU loss, here they are…

“We’ve lost seven games in the last minute. This program’s competitive… Honestly if I’m (not) going to be coaching here, I’m going to be coaching somewhere else — I’ve proven that I run a clean program, I don’t cheat, my players graduate and we have discipline. So if you don’t want me here, there’s going to be someone else who wants me. But that’s part of the job.”

Well okay then.

If I see Keiton at the point for more than five minutes there are going to be remote controllers and Blue Moon bottles flying around the Pistols’ home. There’s literally nothing to lose at this point in the season (besides NIT seeding?) so I hope Ford starts Dowell at the point and lets it play out how it may.

What I’m worried about
As we discussed on the podcast yesterday, OSU hasn’t necessarily had a terrible loss for how good its team is right now. Losing in Boulder in the third conference game is justifiable. As Q pointed out, the only team to win in Lincoln this year has been KU. A&M is ranked so you can’t really expect to beat them at home or on the road. In fact, in Big 12 play OSU has won as many games they’ve been an underdog in (1, Mizzou) as they’ve lost games in which they were a favorite (1, Tech).

Obviously the Iowa State game at home would have been an absolute disaster of a loss but super-Keiton showed up for the last five minutes so OSU sneaked that one out. All that being said, losing this game would be an abomination. I don’t care if you’re 4-9 or 99-4, you’re still a division 1 basketball team playing a home conference game against a team who may or may not have a lame duck coach and is 2-7 on the road this year.

Two random stats that (probably) only interest me:

• Oklahoma State and Iowa State are the only two teams in the Big 12 winless on the road (both 0-7)
• Only three teams in the Big 12 have fewer sellouts this year than OSU. That’s horrendous

Video to get you ready
Big props to osuathletics for putting these videos up on YouTube. Also, I’m trying to figure out if Joey Graham really had 30 dunks in this Texas game or they just 5 that they showed from 6 different angles. The glory days!