Tons of fouls being called
While you can make a case the officiating was pretty lopsided in favor of Providence last night, you can also make the case that the Friars did a much better job than the Red Raiders of getting into the paint and drawing contact.
Per Sports-Reference analytics, Texas Tech only got to the free-throw line on .293% of their field foal attempts while Providence got to the line on .549% of theirs. We knew coming into the game Providence was one of the better teams in the country at getting to the free-throw line and that proved to be true in this game.
That said, Texas Tech’s key players got into foul trouble extremely early in this game. Terrence Shannon Jr picked up three fouls after only 10 minutes of play, and heading into the second half 4 of Texas Tech’s starters had 2-3 fouls. This led to multiple issues later in the game and ultimately restricted Texas Tech from playing their two best players in Terrence Shannon Jr. and Kevin McCullar.
If Texas Tech is going to have any chance at making noise this season, they will have to clean up their defense and avoid games like this in the future.