Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks vs. Texas Tech Red Raiders | Game Preview

WHAT TO EXPECT | Another smallish team for Texas Tech, which I would think that Texas Tech should have an advantage on the boards and inside. The fact that F Jaye Crockett made it back from injury helps significantly on the inside and I wonder how long before he replaces Tolbert in the starting lineup. Not that Tolbert has been bad, but Crockett offers more in terms of scoring at this point in their respective careers. SFA doesn't turn the ball over too much, only 17 per game, and they do crash the boards, averaging 12.5 offensive rebounds per game.

The Lumberjacks whipped Centenary by almost 40 in their first game and in their second game, lost a close one to San Diego.

SFA and Texas Tech are actually pretty close in terms of offensive production thus far, both averaging a little over 1 point per possession (1.06 for SFA and 1.09 for TTU), although SFA has been much better defensively than Texas Tech (0.8 for SFA to 1.02 for TTU). You can chalk that up to competition, but it's early for both teams and it's hard to use possession rates at this point in the season. Texas Tech needs to buckle down defensively and I'm thinking that SFA's guards will give Texas Tech fits and that will be the biggest key for this game.

KEY MATCHUPS

Bostic vs. Gotcher | Bostic has been on fire for SFA, as he's averaging 19 per game on 62.5% from the field and I'd expect that Gotcher will get the call defensively, at least initially. Gotcher has been incredibly solid and I didn't realize until later that he was the only player that played all 40 minutes against North Texas.

Lewandowski vs. Scott | SFA shouldn't be able to consistently stop Lew and although Lew wasn't perfect against Nort Texas, I thought he did a much better job of using his body to score and was perfect from the line. You like to see that type of play from your lone senior.

Nurse vs. Gardner | I'm a little concerned about the defense, as mentioned above and it starts with the guards tightening up a bit on the opposing team.  There have been too many drives to the basket and much credit goes to UNT's Chris Jones as he was fantastic, but the help defense and the guards need to do a better job of keeping their man in front of them.