BYU and No. 10 Texas Tech complete their regular seasons Saturday after Texas Tech’s 84-71 win earlier this year.
The main difference this time: both teams will be without their veteran stars. Both BYU’s Richie Saunders and Texas Tech’s JT Toppin suffered season-ending ACL injuries a few weeks ago.
Since Toppin’s injury, Texas Tech has gone 3-1 with wins at Iowa State and against Kansas State and Cincinnati, along with a loss at home to TCU on Tuesday.
This season, the Red Raiders are 22-8 and 12-5 in conference play, good for fourth in the conference. They are also one of only two teams to beat the No. 1 team in the country, Duke.
Aside from Toppin, Texas Tech is led in scoring by reigning Big 12 Player of the Week Christian Anderson, who is averaging 19.1 points per game this season. Anderson ranks first in the Big 12 and third in the country with 7.7 assists per game. He needs just three assists Saturday to break Texas Tech’s all-time single-season assist record.
Guard Donovan Atwell is averaging 13.3 points per game and nearly 19 per game since Toppin’s injury. Both Atwell and Anderson shoot over 40% from 3-point range.
In order to come away with a win, BYU will likely have to slow down Texas Tech’s three-point attack, which leads the conference in both 3-point attempts (29.1 per game) and 3-point percentage (39.4%). When the teams played earlier this year, Texas Tech made 11 3s compared to BYU’s five.
It was also AJ Dybantsa’s worst scoring performance of his BYU career, finishing with just 13 points on 6-of-17 shooting. BYU will also have to contain LeJuan Watts, who had 20 points and eight rebounds in the last matchup.
If there is a team BYU could call a thorn in its side in recent years, Texas Tech may be it. BYU is 0-4 against the Red Raiders over the past three years, but ESPN’s matchup predictor gives the Cougars a 59.2% chance to win. The biggest reason for that: the Marriott Center.
Texas Tech is led by Grant McCasland, who coached Dybantsa as an assistant on the USA U19 men’s national team last summer during the FIBA World Cup. After the win over BYU earlier this season, McCasland said of Dybantsa, “AJ’s really good. He’ll bounce back. I mean, he’s a load to handle, as we all saw.”
BYU desperately needs Dybantsa and his supporting cast to play well, as a loss could drop the Cougars to an 8 or 9 seed in Joe Lunardi’s bracketology. BYU does not want to face a No. 1 seed in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
A win, on the other hand, would give the Cougars their second top-10 win of the season and provide confidence heading into the Big 12 Tournament.