LUBBOCK, Texas — The deeper any team goes into a regular season undefeated the bigger the target. That team gets everyone’s best effort. Every team wants to be THAT team.
As the Kansas State Wildcats walked up the tunnel at United Supermarkets Arena to their locker room after beating Texas Tech, 65-59, they were THAT team. They were yelling, hollering, clearly overjoyed Wildcats who were thrilled they were the team that ended the Lady Raiders’ undefeated start.
But Texas Tech’s dream season is not over. Far from it. But the good vibes and national headlines that come from being one of three undefeated teams in the country going into the game are behind the Lady Raiders, who were No. 17 in the country entering the game.
“There’s no doubt they went after us,” Texas Tech coach Krista Gerlich said. “And our kids have to know how to respond to that. They have to know that they’re going to get everyone’s best shot, and so they’ve got to step up, rise up, and find a way to compete every possession.”
Texas Tech Women’s Basketball Missed Opportunities
Saturday was not that day for Tech (19-1, 6-1), who missed a chance to set a program record with 20 wins in a row. The Lady Raiders missed a chance to go to 7-0 in conference play for the first time since 1995-96. It was an uneven effort from the start, with only stretches of consistent play.
Texas Tech overwhelmed Kansas State at times defensively, forcing 18 turnovers and scoring 18 points off those mistakes. In some cases, that decides a game. But the Lady Raiders shot 39% for the game and were dramatically outrebounded by the Wildcats, 46-20. That included K-State outrebounding Texas Tech, 17-3, on the offensive glass. K-State coach Jeff Mittie had no explanation for it, saying his team was a “below-average rebounding team.”
That helped the Wildcats control much of the game. The Lady Raiders wrestled it away late in the third quarter, thanks to a nine-point surge by forward Jada Malone, who scored 15 points. Bailey Maupin dropped in a team-high 18 points. But no one shot consistently well for the entire game and the Lady Raiders struggled to make shots in the final minutes. Texas Tech missed six of its final seven shots. It summed up the day.
Lubbock Showed Up
But it wasn’t the only takeaway. The crowd was incredible. More than 9,000 showed up. Before Saturday, Tech’s best home crowd this season was 15,098 on Dec. 17 against Jacksonville. But that was an Education Day promotion. Thousands of grade school students skipped school and who doesn’t want to do that?
This was much different. The energy was there because, for the first time since Gerlich took over in 2020, the Lady Raiders have something special going on. Mittie knows what it means to have a 19-1 women’s team in Lubbock.
“It’s really, really great to see a crowd in there,” Mittie said. “Really great to see that energy. This building is a special place for women’s basketball, and it’s great to see that kind of crowd, that kind of response to what they’re having [which] is a really, really good year.”
Under Gerlich, the Lady Raiders have won 20 games just once. That 2022-23 season required two wins in the WNIT to reach 20 victories. Texas Tech has never had 20 regular season wins before the Big 12 Tournament under the former Lady Raiders point guard, who helped Tech to its 1993 national title with teammate Sheryl Swoopes. Unlike other programs that have flipped success quickly, this program has had three previous seasons where it won double-digit games in non-conference, only to fall under-.500 in Big 12 play.
Texas Tech Moving Forward
So, what’s changed? From Gerlich’s perspective, not much. This has been what she’s been building toward.
“We have the right mentality,” Gerlich said. “We have the right group. They’re very coachable. We have a great staff, and to be honest, we’ve been building to this, right? I mean, we have six returners that understand what our defense is supposed to look like. The kids that we recruited, we were able to recruit to our defense and to our needs, and that has certainly helped us.”
None is more important than Maupin, the four-year starter from Gruver, which is three hours north of Lubbock in the Texas panhandle. Her parents went to Texas Tech. There was little question the two-time Texas high school state champion was going to go to Tech if she had the chance. She gets the importance of a great women’s program in Lubbock, where the names of Swoopes and her coach, Marsha Sharp, loom over the court on the first level of the arena’s concourse.
So does Gerlich, who was born a 14-minute drive from Gruver in Spearman, Texas. She lived it. She helped procure the net and the national championship trophy that sit encased in glass in the arena’s concourse. She returned to her alma mater for this purpose — to end an NCAA Tournament drought that is more than a decade old.
She knows what must happen next, as the Lady Raiders hit the road next week for a trip to Utah that starts at BYU.
“What I’m most interested to see is how we respond, for sure, because this is the first time that we’ll have to do that this year,” Gerlich said.
For what it’s worth, that 1992-93 team that Gerlich and Swoopes anchored last lost nearly 33 years to the day on Saturday — Jan. 20, 1993. Those Lady Raiders lost 76-75 to Texas. Their response was to win 19 straight games and a national title.
Texas Tech’s NCAA Tournament dreams don’t hinge on Saturday’s loss. They hinge on what happens next. If Gerlich has the team she thinks she has, their dance card will be full come mid-March.
