 "Photo: Karl Anderson")
John Roberson scored a season-high 28 points against Oklahoma State, but another statistic he recorded Saturday will be the one people remember.
The guard surpassed Stan Bonewitz, who played for the Red Raiders from 1995 to 1999, as the school’s best assist man with 436 career assists, including three assists against the Cowboys. Bonewitz had 435 career assists in a Tech uniform.
To make it a little bit sweeter, Tech reversed its recent fortunes with an 81-74 win against the Cowboys on Saturday in the United Spirit Arena.
“It feels good going into history,” Roberson said. “I didn’t even know, I think someone gave me a hint that I might break it this game. But it feels good just to know your going to be in the books going down in history.”
The milestones don’t end with Roberson.
The win gave Tech its 15th of the year — surpassing the 2008-2009 Red Raiders who had 14 wins — with eight more games to be played in the regular season.
Tech also tied its total Big 12 Conference victories from a season ago at three wins.
“We just think we’re a better team than last year,” said Tech forward Mike Singletary, who chipped in 22 points of his own. “We look at what we did last year, and it was kind of a disappointment. Knowing that we’ve won more games in total than last year, and knowing that we’ve tied how many games we won in the Big 12 last year halfway through gives us a lot of motivation to keep it going.”
But beating Oklahoma State, a team that crushed Tech less than a month ago in Stillwater, Okla., 81-52, may not have been the most impressive outcome of the day.
Oklahoma State’s star guard James Anderson, who entered the game leading the Big 12 in scoring and lit the Red Raiders up in Stillwater struggled in Lubbock scoring just 10 points before fouling out with about five minutes left in the game.
After a slow start, the Red Raiders (15-7, 3-5 in Big 12 play) stunned Oklahoma State (16-7, 4-5) in the first half with a 26-5 run and entered the second half up, 35-26.
Tech led by 18 points with 15 minutes to go in the game, but OSU began to work its way back in. With three minutes left, OSU cut that lead to four points, 65-61.
But when the Cowboys began to send the Red Raiders to the free-throw line to prolong the game, Tech shot 12-of-15 from the charity stripe.
Oklahoma State forward Matt Pilgrim was disappointed with his team’s performance after the game and said the loss was surprising considering what happened in the first meeting between the two teams.
“I felt we should have beat them the same way we did last time,” he said. “Nothing in my mind ever told me we were going to lose to Texas Tech. No disrespect to their culture and team, but that’s just how I felt.”
The Red Raiders have a 3-4 record since falling to the Cowboys and has a date against Oklahoma — a team they already beat in Lubbock — on Wednesday.
But before Tech moved to preparing for a rematch against the Sooners, Saturday was a time to celebrate Roberson’s accomplishment and Tech’s improvement.
Being a junior, Roberson has another year to put the assists record out of reach.
“That’s a heck of a record to get so soon,” Tech coach Pat Knight said. “Usually you hear about guys in their senior year with maybe two or three games to go who get that. I just feel bad for him because if we could have had some better teams his first two years he might have gotten it last year.”
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