NCAA Tournament 2022: 5 key storylines for Duke vs Texas Tech matchup

Experience over Youth

There is something to be said about experience and there is also an argument to be made for youth. In college basketball, former coach and current analyst say you want to get old and stay old. How do you do that?  You have program guys who stay in your system for a while and then you go out and get experience grad transfers to stay old.

Texas Tech has done just that as they have one of the most experienced teams in the entire country as every member of their starting five is at least a junior and 4 are seniors. Their rotation players are all upperclassmen except for one player.

The Red Raiders have experience and they have all been through the gauntlet of the College Basketball season for a good number of years. Their players have tons of tournament experience and some of them were on the Texas Tech National Runner up team so they know how to win, have bought in, and play Red Raider basketball. In games like these that are so evenly matched that is a tremendous advantage to have because they all trust each other.

Duke has a ton of talent and some of the best athletes in the college game but very few players are upperclassmen. In fact, only one starter, Wendell Moore, has ever played in the tournament before this season with Duke. Everyone else is either a freshman or a sophomore. Their rotation players off the bench three are seniors.

The other advantage that Texas Tech will have here is they play and trust far more guys because they are older, and I don’t want to say K doesn’t trust his team but they basically play six guys and sometimes will go to a 7th or 8th guy. The 7th and 8th guys barely average over 10 minutes of game time.

Are experience and slow play going to win out, or are athleticism and youth going to prevail?  This is going to be one of the most-watched games in tournament history as both have rabid fan bases, a ton is on the line and it could be the last time the game will ever see a legend roaming the sidelines.

There are far more storylines in this game than just these five but these five are going to give a very good picture of what to expect in this game. It is going to be clunky, it is going to be fun and it won’t likely be all that high scoring, because Texas Tech won’t let it.