Tip: 8 PM
TV: ESPN2

After last year’s trip to Lubbock and the meager, half-dead crowd that filled United Spirit Arena, I never thought I’d call that gym a tough place to play. But in the past two weeks, two different top ten teams have fallen victim to the Texas Tech Red Raiders on their home court. Both Kansas and Texas A&M left the O’Reilly Auto Parts Corporate Whore Court (brought to you by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal with the co-operation of Jason’s Deli) as a mob of red-clad students rushed the floor.

Texas (15-5 overall, 5-1 Big 12) comes to town having won their last two games after dropping the two prior. Texas Tech (15-6, 4-2) is looking to bounce back from an absolute ass-kicking at the hands of the Missouri Tigers this weekend.

The story of the game seems to be the injury bug going around the Red Raider locker room. Seven-footer Esmir Rizvic was knocked out a few weeks ago by the flailing elbows of Longar Longar, while starter Jon Plefka and key reserve Charlie Burgess were both missing from the loss to Mizzou. Plefka is suffering from a leg injury described as a tear and will likely miss tonight’s game. Burgess badly sprained his ankle at a team shootaround on Saturday. No word yet on whether he will be starting or even playing against the Horns.

Seniors Darryl Dora and Jarrius Jackson will be available for Coach Bob Knight, and he will need a ton of minutes out of them with the shortened bench. But if the Mizzou game was any indication, Knight is not too confident in Dora the Explorer. He sat the forward for most of the game, giving him only 10 minutes on the court. Jackson, on the other hand, has been as effective as ever. He’s hitting at just a hair under 50% from behind the arc and is the 8th best player in the entire country when it comes to protecting the basketball.

Martin Zeno is the other man to keep an eye on tonight. Zeno, Jackson, and the injured Burgess are the only players to average over 30 minutes a game for the Red Raiders, while a motley band shares responsibilities the rest of the time. Zeno is scoring 16.4 points a game and leads a poor rebounding team with 4.7 boards a game.

After watching Texas struggle against a Baylor team that was moving the ball very well, I’m fairly concerned about our ability to contain Knight’s highly-effective motion offense. Besides Justin Mason and Craig Winder, the Longhorns don’t have a whole lot of quality defense available, so it’s probably best for the team to stick with a zone. If Tech shoots us out of it, though, we could be in for some trouble.

Kevin Durant heads into the game with 488 points on the year, just 160 shy of Terrence Rencher’s freshman record. (As an interesting aside, I threw a football around with Rencher while waiting to be let into the Baylor game on Saturday. Not something I thought I’d be doing when I woke up that morning.) KD needs only 16 points per game the rest of the way to tie the mark, and I have a strong feeling we’ll be seeing much more than that tonight.

Tonight, Texas needs to look to take advantage of a Texas Tech squad that is not doing very well on the glass, and will now likely be without two of their “better” rebounders in Burgess and Plefka. The Horns average eleven more boards per game than Tech, and will hopefully be able to enjoy that margin against the depleted Red Raiders.

The injuries also mean that Texas should push the tempo in this game. While that’s always a good idea for a team like Texas that is lacking on defense, it should be especially important against a team who will be relying on reserves to fill in a ton of minutes. Get the opponents gassed, and Knight will have to look even further down his bench to get them some rest. Of course, this strategy means that Connor Atchley will have to come up big for a second straight game, while J.D. Lewis will need to refrain from offensive stupidity when giving our starters a brief spell.

The crowd is going to be a huge factor in this one, so hopefully Texas can jump out to an early lead. They had a huge advantage by halftime in Knoxville and never trailed by a significant margin in the first half of the road losses to Oklahoma State and Villanova. The Horns were able to fight back from five down on multiple occasions in the overtimes of the Okie State game, but we have yet to see how they’ll perform if faced with a massive deficit in front of a hostile crowd looking for the knockout punch.

For a shorter look at the game from our opponent’s point of view, be sure to check out the preview at the Red Raider blog Double T Nation. And don’t forget to buy your tickets for the home game against K-State on Saturday afternoon. As of Tuesday morning, approximately 2,600 tickets were remaining for the game. Could we have two huge crowds in a row for historically middle-of-the-road conference teams? I’ll cross my fingers.

See you again on Thursday for a game wrap, and perhaps another album from earlier in the season.