Beaten up in Lubbock, Arizona Wildcats flip script at McKale with win over Texas Tech

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Over 15,000 people packed into Texas Tech’s United Supermarkets Arena on Jan. 18, including some 4,200 students stretching from the upper deck to the floor, their collective vocal support helping the Red Raiders wipe Arizona off the glass, disrupt its offense, and send the Wildcats out into an evening of near-horizontal snowfall with a 16-point loss.

On Saturday, in Arizona’s 82-73 win over Texas Tech, pretty much the opposite happened.

Over 14,000 people packed into McKale Center on a warm February evening, mostly stood on their feet and helped the Wildcats outrebound the Red Raiders 42-29 despite playing without starting power forward Trey Townsend and keep them to just 37.1% shooting.

“That’s life on the road in the Big 12,” Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland said. “It’s not all that complicated.

There were some subtle difference this time, however. The Wildcats were playing without Townsend because of concussion symptoms that developed after he banged his head on the floor at BYU on Tuesday, with Lloyd starting freshman Carter Bryant instead and giving a career-high 30 minutes to big man Henri Veesaar.

Also, the Wildcats may simply be a better team than they were a few weeks ago. Since Jan. 18, Arizona has easily beaten Oklahoma State and Colorado, knocked off then-third-ranked Iowa State while collecting road wins in rowdy environments at ASU and BYU.

“We all know there’s an advantage to playing at home… it’s well known in college basketball,” Lloyd said of the two games with Texas Tech. “And us not playing up to what we felt was to our level of physicality and attention to detail (in Lubbock), obviously, we were able to address some things from the last time we played them.”

Lloyd went on to note that the margin of error was thin Saturday, which was another slight difference between the two games: Texas Tech trailed by only five with 18 seconds to go, while UA missed 15 of its final 16 shots in Lubbock, its confidence long drained before the final…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/beaten-lubbock-arizona-wildcats-flip-170509835.html

Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic

Publish date : 2025-02-09 17:05:00

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