* The TKO deficit of 24 points from which teams, for all intents and purposes, cannot recover, was reached with 55 seconds remaining in the first half of Texas Tech's game with Alabama. At the halftime break, the Red Raiders trailed, 49-25. This game was over, and deep down in their heart, everybody, including Grant McCasland, his coaches and players knew it. Such blowouts do occur in college basketball, although they are practically unheard of between power conference teams in the NCAA tournament, especially when Las Vegas sees the game as basically a tossup. And even more rarely do we see one of the teams in this scenario get knocked out in the first half. Odd. Very odd, indeed.
Nevertheless, in situations such as this the losing team almost always makes some sort of a run in the second half. The winning team drops its guard, the losing team, its ears ringing from a halftime tongue-lashing, summons up some pride, and cuts deeply into the humongous lead. In some exceedingly rare occasions, the lagging team comes all the way back and takes a brief lead. Alas, this did not happen in the second half of the Texas Tech/Alabama game. The closest the Red Raiders got was within 18 points at the 12-minute mark. They managed to shave a whopping six points off their halftime deficit. But from then on it was even uglier than before. Texas Tech allowed the Crimson Tide to extend their lead to 34 points with 4:41 to play. McCasland ran up the white flag a couple of minutes later, the subs came in, and the game ended as a 25-point defeat for the Red Raiders.
Texas Tech's failure to make any kind of a run says as much about their frame of mind as their pitiful performance in the first half. If I had a ranch, I'd bet it that Nate Oats warned his players at halftime that the Red Raiders were going to make a run and to be prepared for it. And although he knew the game was effectively over, I'm sure he actually believed Texas Tech would come storming back. The Red Raiders were a great team, right? Texas Tech was a proud program, right? Responding is what teams with pride do. And you can be absolutely certain Oats was pleasantly surprised--shocked more like it--that he didn't have to endure the stress of watching most of his lead melt away.
So, if you need further evidence that there was some very bad juju in Texas Tech's locker room prior to this game, this is it.
* The use of Donovan Atwell on the defensive end was exceedingly strange. Logically, one would have expected Atwell, the best defensive guard in the Big XII, to be all over Labaron Philon, Alabama's All-American guard. He was not. Atwell spent most of this game guarding Amari Allen. This decision didn't hurt Texas Tech insofar as Philon didn't really do much--nine points on 2-of-12 shooting. But what was bizarre is that Atwell was not switched to Latrell Wrightsell, who went through Christian Anderson's defense like a soldering iron through pudding. Atwell could have put that fire out, but was never given the chance. I don't know what to say about Atwell's usage. I surely don't. It is just another of this game's oddities.
* Leon Horner entered this game midway through the first half. Horner didn't play all that much this season, and rarely entered games so early. What this tells me is that McCasland sees Horner as an effort guy who has some toughness, which means he knew his team was displaying no effort or toughness against the Crimson Tide. With the benefit of hindsight, I think we can now safely say that Horner was underutilized this season. Some of us were saying that three months ago.
* Nolan Groves showed more tenacity and fight on the glass in three minutes of play than the rest of the team did in all their minutes combined. Don't you think that setting the friggin' freshman record for rebounds in his very first game might have actually meant something and justified more minutes throughout the season?
* All-American Christian Anderson's stat line: seven points on 2-of-11 shooting, one rebound, three assists, two turnovers, four steals in 37 minutes. Some guy named Latrell Wrightsell: 24 points on 7-of-10 shooting, four rebounds, one assist, one turnover and two steals in 26 minutes. One of those players played to win. The other didn't give a damn.