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Texas Tech will look to make an energized return to the court when it faces West Virginia on Saturday afternoon in Big 12 play at Lubbock, Texas.

The No. 9 Red Raiders were plagued by an empty tank in the final minutes of a 69-66 road loss to TCU on Tuesday. Texas Tech’s scoring output was 16 points below its season average.

Red Raiders coach Grant McCasland pointed at himself for why his squad sputtered after taking a four-point lead with less than seven minutes to play.

“I got to do a better job — played too many guys too many minutes,” McCasland said. “Felt like those guys had the understanding of what it took to win this game, but we ran out of gas and weren’t able to finish it.”

Texas Tech (20-6, 11-4 Big 12) has split its past four games after winning the previous seven.

Making the game against the Mountaineers (16-10, 7-8) even more pivotal is that the Red Raiders play No. 5 Houston, the Big 12 leader, on Monday.

Big man JT Toppin will look to bounce back after having just 14 points against TCU. He scored 32 points in a win against Oklahoma State on Feb. 15 and a career-best 41 the prior game in a double-overtime victory against Arizona State.

Toppin has put together four consecutive double-doubles. He averaged 20 shots over the first three of those games before going 5 of 9 against TCU.

“They just double-teamed him all game long and got the ball out of his hands,” McCasland said. “… You just swing the basketball to a few guys and you make those and it makes it where you can’t do that very often, and we’ve been successful with that. But yeah, they were physical and pushing his touches out.”

Toppin leads the Red Raiders in scoring (17.1 points per game) and rebounding (9.2 per game). Darrion Williams averages 15.2 points and 4.0 assists, and Chance McMillian is scoring 15.1 points per game and has knocked down a team-leading 64 3-pointers.

West Virginia is coming off a much-needed 62-59 home win over Cincinnati on Wednesday. The Mountaineers lost six of their previous eight games.

However, it was nervous time down the stretch against the Bearcats after Javon Small made two free throws to give West Virginia a 62-53 lead with 34 seconds left.

Cincinnati’s Dan Skillings Jr. drilled a 3-pointer with 7.9 seconds left, got the ball again on a bad pass by West Virginia’s Amani Hansberry and knocked down another trey with four seconds to play.

After a timeout, the Mountaineers’ Joseph Yesufu turned the ball over and the Bearcats had the ball under their own basket. The inbounds pass went to a wide-open Tyler Betsey, but his tying 3-point attempt bounced off the front rim with less than two seconds remaining.

“Sometimes when you haven’t had a lot of success recently, some of that doubt can creep in, and some of that doubt crept in on that last shot when it was in the air,” Mountaineers coach Darian DeVries said.

Hansberry had 17 points and a career-best 13 rebounds and Small added 16 points while laboring through 36 minutes.

“My ankle hurt a little bit, but it happens in basketball and injuries happen,” Small said. “Sometimes you have to just play through them. I just happened to play through mine.”

Small leads the Mountaineers in scoring (18.5 ppg), assists (5.5 per game), 3-pointers (62) and steals (45).

This the lone regular-season matchup between the teams this season. They met once last season, with Texas Tech notching an 81-70 road victory.

–Field Level Media