#698 ASA FREE PLAY ON West Virginia -4 over Texas Tech, Wednesday at 7 PM ET - Lots of distractions for Tech entering this tournament with head coach Mark Adams suspended for inappropriate remarks he made to some of his players. Sometimes teams rally around their coach in this situation showing support and a win one for the gipper situation but we’re hearing most aren’t fond of Adams so we don’t expect that to happen here. We like the coaching advantage in this one with Bob Huggins calling the shots for the Mountaineers vs interim head coach Corey Williams for Tech. These 2 split their meetings this season with each winning on the other’s home court. WVU won by 15 @ Texas Tech and the Red Raiders returned the favor on Feb 18th winning 78-72 on the road. In that loss WVU led by 8 in the 2nd half and it was a 2 point game with under 40 seconds remaining. Tech shot a better % from the field, from beyond the arc, and they were +7 at the FT line. The Raiders also won the battle on the glass at +11 gather over 45% of their missed shots. We don’t expect a repeat here as West Virginia is the better offensive team and the better rebounding team. The Mountaineers rank 15th nationally in efficiency averaging 1.17 PPP and Texas Tech ranks dead last in the Big 12 in eFG% and they turn the ball over 20% of the time (9th in the conference). On the boards, WVU is the #1 offensive rebounding team in the league while Tech ranks 9th on the defensive glass. Lastly, while West Virginia lost the FT battle as well in the most recent game, that’s a rare occurrence. They rank 19th nationally with 22.5% of their points coming from the charity stripe and hit 74% when they get there. Most of the numbers in the most recent meeting were aberrations in our mind and it was still close. We expect those to even out in this one and WVU to get the win in Kansas City.