Texas Tech earned its fifth win of the season over a scrappy-shooting Long Island team, 96-66, a game which was too close at the half for Tech head coach Chris Beard.

Five players finished in double figures, including the two freshmen Jahmi'us Ramsey and Terrence Shannon Jr. plus the redshirt Kevin McCullar, Davide Moretti and Kyler Edwards.

Ramsey led the Red Raiders with 27 points, which was four points shy of tying the freshman single-game scoring record set by Jason Sasser and Lance Hughes.

Beard was very appreciative of the crowd as usual with a packed student section. In addition, Beard said the Long Island Sharks will compete for their conference title, and this win is a good win over a quality opponent.

"Just really pleased with today's effort," Beard said, "especially in the second half. A lot of teams will kind of buckle start getting a little passive and nervous and stuff looking at that scoreboard. Our guys just kind of grinded away."

Beard mentioned how he thinks the team won every four-minute segment in the second half after letting the Sharks take a one-point lead at the half in thanks to a buzzer-beater.

A guy who got going and got going early was Davide Moretti, who hit his first two three-point attempts which were also the first six points of the game for the Red Raiders.

Moretti showed poise throughout the game, only giving up one turnover while shooting 5-6 on the night.

And that was probably the key point in the second half other than a much-improved second half defensively: shooting the ball.

The Red Raiders shot 51.5 percent from the field and knocked down 11 threes (11-19) on their way to a 55-point second half. In relation, the defense only allowed 24 points to the Sharks on 8-24 shooting.

McCullar had one of his better games, although it is still early. The redshirt freshman scored 10 points on 4-7 shooting from the field and 2-3 from beyond the arc. The San Antonio-Wagner (TX) guard only had one turnover, which came in the first in his first few minutes of action.

Edwards also made an impact, especially in the second half. Perhaps a key moment that carried the momentum was his reverse layup resulting in a trip to the free-throw line for one more. That play got the crowd on its feet from then on.

"Big Russ" Tchewa had a decent outing today after not seeing a lot of minutes last game against Tennessee State. Beard said it was due to the Sharks having the height to throw in some minutes for Tchewa. Beard also talked about Russ's two jumpers.

"Russ has been practicing better," Beard said. "We had wanted to give him an opportunity today. Last game, when we didn't get to play (Russ) as much as we all wanted. They didn't small-ball us. Today, this team had the seven-footer, and it allowed us to play Russ some minutes, and I thought he did some good things out there. Those jumpshots he took late, those aren't just crazy, late-game shots. Russ can shoot. He's really working on it, but there'll be a day, sooner or later, where Russ can stretch defenses and shoot."

As far as turnovers, the Red Raiders only had 10 of those tonight. Beard talked about them after the game saying they can always get better.

"You always striving for that perfect game," Beard said. "You never quite can get there. I've always wanted to coach a team that had zero turnovers. We had a team one time that had one turnover (the kid dribbled out of bounds). Still talk to him about it today in his Christmas card each year. But today in the second half, this was a clean game. We shoot 50 percent from the field, over 43 percent, 75 percent free-throw, 14 offensive rebounds on our missed shots. We took five or six charges, and we played a ten-turnover game."

Beard continued and said statistically that is as how well you can play the game, and the Red Raiders showed that in the highlighted second half.