Techsters begin Texas road swing
DENTON – Louisiana Tech’s goal at the beginning of the season was to finish in the top four of the Conference USA standings, thus earning a double bye in the upcoming league tournament set for the second week of March in Birmingham.
With only two weeks and four games remaining in the regular season, Tech (13-12, 8-6 C-USA) finds itself in a must-win scenario heading into this week’s two-game road trip to Texas beginning with Thursday night’s matchup at the Super Pit against North Texas (9-15, 4-10 C-USA). Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. and the game can be heard on the LA Tech Sports Network.
Tech then travels to Houston Saturday to face Rice.
Head coach Tyler Summit and Co. currently sit in a two-way tie for fifth place with Old Dominion, one full game behind Charlotte. However, the 49ers hold the tie-breaker over Tech with their head-to-head win against the Lady Techsters back in early January. Thus, Tech has to make up two games over the final two weeks.
“It’s a very important road trip for us this week with North Texas and Rice,” Summitt said. “We are no longer in control of our own destiny anymore but all we can do is take one game at a time against two teams we barely beat at home. We had better be focused.
“I think we are always trying to find new ways to motivate our players and at this point maybe that is by reminding them there are only four games left. And that it is do-or-die right now. So either you push through or you fold and look back at it with regret. So I think the message is either the pain of discipline and hard work now or the pain of regret after the season.”
Two weeks ago, Tech sat alone in fourth place in the C-USA standings. However, the Lady Techsters have dropped three of their last four league games, putting themselves in the role of trying to play catch up.
“I think the mentality is they know we haven’t lived up to our own expectations,” Summitt said. “They want to find that 40 minutes of effort if nothing else. I think they realize why it happens; they recognize when we hit the lulls why we lose the energy.
“We asked our players this week what their goals were and a lot of them said to go 4-0 which will be tough. I think these two games on the road we have our work cut out for us. These two teams know they can beat us, and we did not play well against them last time. It would be great to go 2-0 on this road trip. It would give us some great momentum coming home.”
Tech defeated North Texas 77-71 on Feb. 6 in Ruston in a game that saw Brandi Wingate score a career-high 29 points. However, the win was far from easy.
“North Texas is a very athletic team,” Summitt said. “They got after us on defense and really pressured us and sped us up. I don’t think we executed real well in the first half against them the first time because of their pressure. Their ball screen offense hurt us regardless of what defense we threw at them. It’s been an emphasis this week and so hopefully we can speed them up.”
North Texas has dropped six of their its seven games with the lone victory being a 58-40 win over FIU last Thursday in Miami. However, the Mean Green have some impressive wins over both Marshall and UAB and a non-conference win over Top 20 Oklahoma.
Tech leads the all-time series 8-0, including a 3-0 mark in Denton.