Game Preview :: Texas Tech Red Raiders vs. Oklahoma Sooners

The Season Thus Far: It was just a couple of games ago that the Sooners were visiting Lubbock, without Willie Warren, and leaving with a 10 point loss. But the Sooners have been pretty good at home, beating Texas on Saturday, led by the impressive freshman guard Tommy Mason-Griffin (the guy can play, he's a ton of fun to watch). However, after Saturday's game, two Sooner freshmen, Andrew Fitzgerald and Steven Pledger, attempted to shoplift a couple of items and are in a bit of hot water. Fitzgerald and Pledger did contribute to the Sooners win on Saturday, but I would expect that both of these gentlemen will not be in the arena tonight.

The Main Players: As mentioned above, Mason-Griffin is a fun point guard to watch. Typically with freshmen point guards, you tend to get see players, get in above their head, but that doesn't seem to be the case with Mason-Griffin. As mentioned above, he led the team in scoring against Texas and he was really good. And he's doing all of this while Warren is still getting back into playing shape. Davis came up with a big night, scoring 20 points, but I don't think the Sooners can count on that type of production from Davis on a consistent basis.

Strong Perimeter Defense: I'm hoping like hell that PK and his team can play excellent perimeter defense for two games in a row. The Sooners made 41% of their 3-point shots against Texas, in large part behind Mason-Griffin who went 5 for 7. I'll mention Davis again, but he also made 4 of 11 3-point shots. The Red Raiders must slow the Sooners down and tighten down for 2 games in a row the perimeter defense. If the Sooners are going to force shots from deep, then Texas Tech needs to get a hand in their face and perhaps more importantly, block out and limit second chance points.

Get to the Line: If there's one thing that Texas Tech seems to have figured out it's smoothing up the offense. Over the last couple of games, it's like watching the offense of a couple of years ago as post-players (namely Darko and Singletary) are finding guards break to the basket for easy buckets. Now, if we can just convince someone other than a 6-2 or under guard to do the same type of thing (namely Theron Jenkins and Brad Reese) then I think this offense just might be on to something.

Everyone Contributes: I mentioned after Saturday's game that I loved the fact that SF Theron Jenkins didn't get into the scoring column, but he contributed 4 rebounds, a block and a couple of steals. The same could be said for SG Nick Okorie, who seemed to be the only offense early in the game against Oklahoma St. and scored 9 points for the game. Same thing about SG David Tairu and PF Darko Cohadarevic who didn't necessarily jump off of the boxscore on Saturday, but they each need to have a positive boxscore.