A roundup of Texas Tech sports news for November 25, 2024.
The Texas Tech football team’s season ended Friday night when the Red Raiders lost to Duke, 3-0, in Durham, North Carolina. The Blue Devils advanced to the Sweet 16 while Tech reloaded for the offseason.
Duke inspired Tech goaltender Faith Nguyen, who made a career-high nine saves in the loss. But Nguyen allowed a goal just 68 seconds before halftime and another eight minutes into the second half, when the home team built an irreversible lead.
“First of all, of course I want to congratulate Duke on a great game,” Texas Tech head coach Tom Stone said. “It was a really good second half and they’re the No. 1 team in the country for a reason. That’s not the reason.” It’s easy to get knocked out, but there’s some consolation when you get knocked out by a really good team that played really well. Because we played really hard, (Duke head coach) Robbie Church, who I coached at the time. I’m so proud of Robbie, even though it’s hard to make him happy right now because of my emotions. We look forward to seeing what he does with this team in his retirement season. Him, Carla, Kieran, Jason, I hope they keep winning so we can say we lost to the national champions. ”
On Saturday, the Lady Raiders improved to 6-0 with a 78-70 win over the New Orleans Privates in Lubbock. In the win, three Texas Tech players scored in double figures, including sophomore Jaylin Bristow, who scored 17 points, and junior Bayley Maupin, who scored a team-high 20 points.
However, this victory wasn’t all that impressive considering the Privateers are winless this season. In fact, this was the second straight game in which the Lady Raiders didn’t put up a dominant effort against a strong opponent.
“We knew before the game that New Orleans was going to play very fast,” head coach Krista Gerlich said, adding, “They’re very fast and small, which made the game pretty ugly. That’s why they really tried to do it.” I was able to take a lot of shots. I thought obviously in the first quarter it took us a little while to figure it out and we knew it was going to happen, but I thought we made the right adjustments and that’s what we thought. Our children responded well and in a sense finished the first quarter…
“They were able to get back the lead and kind of control the scoring. And our second quarter was a lot better. So we felt like we adjusted pretty well up until the third quarter, but in the fourth quarter… In a way, we forgave them.” (New Orleans) kept getting touches in the paint and scoring in the paint, but then we didn’t make any shots, so we’ve got to make more shots.
“I mean, I keep saying this, and I’m going to keep saying this, because I really believe in these girls. But we can shoot the basketball, but we still don’t. I just haven’t been able to shoot at a high clip. But I thought Jarrin (Bristow) obviously helped us with some paint touches, but Bailey (Maupin) obviously was able to take some shots, especially against the zone in the first half, and that helped us as well. I thought we were able to contribute and get results. We also had a little bit of a spark.”
The Texas Tech volleyball team had a tough day on Friday in Fort Worth as the Red Raiders defeated the TCU Horned Frogs 3-0. It was the third consecutive match that Tech failed to win a set.
Bryn Williams led the team with 13 kills, and Hannah Boler had 24 assists and five digs. Meanwhile, TCU star Melanie Parra had 14 kills and seven digs for the No. 22 Horned Frogs.
The Red Raiders will head home for their final two games of the season against Houston and Arizona on Nov. 27 and Nov. 29, respectively.
