Advertisement
Published Mar 10, 2019
Red Raiders receive multiple Big 12 honors after strong regular season
circle avatar
Brandon Soliz  •  RedRaiderSports
Senior Writer
Twitter
@bmsoliz

Texas Tech basketball’s weekend kept rolling with momentum following a Big 12 Conference title clinching-win in Ames, Iowa, on Sunday as Jarret Culver and coach Chris Beard were named Big 12 Player of the Year and Coach of the Year, respectively.

Culver joins Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Marcus Smart and Michael Beasley as the only underclassmen to be named win the award.

Culver was also selected as a unanimous All-Big 12 First Team selection. The Lubbock native led the team with 18.3 points per game, averaged 6.2 rebounds per game and dished out 3.6 assists per outing. He is the first Red Raider to win the award.

Beard guided his team to a 14-4 conference record and becomes the third coach in conference history to win coach of the year in back-to-back seasons. Beard was named co-coach of the year in his second year as the Red Raider head coach. Bill Self and Larry Eustachy are the other two Big 12 coaches that were named coach of the year two times in a row.

Texas Tech is now 50-5 at home under Beard’s guidance and his overall Texas Tech record now sits at 71-29.

Culver and Beard took home the top conference awards but the Red Raiders weren’t done with just those two.

Davide Moretti earned All-Big 12 Third Team honors on Sunday. The sophomore from Italy led the nation in free-throw percentage at 93.3 percent on the year. He topped the conference in three-point shooting as well with his 48.1 percent mark from behind the arc.

Matt Mooney and Tariq Owens are two key components in the Red Raider defense. Both were named to the Big 12 All-Defensive squad after their outings.

Mooney personally racked in Big 12 Second Team honors on Sunday as well as earning the Big 12 All-Newcomer accolade. Mooney, a grad transfer, finished the regular averaging 10.9 points, 3.3 assists and 1.7 steals per game. He led the Red Raiders with five assists and four steals on Saturday in Ames where he also had 13 points and six rebounds. He's dished out 27 assists over the past five games going into the postseason.

Owens established himself as one of the strongest defenders in the conference this year. The grad transfer from St. Johns set new school records in his first year on campus as he blocked 75 shots on the year and sent back eight shots against Memphis for the single-game program record.

Owens and Mooney join Zhaire Smith as the only Red Raiders to earn Big 12 All-Defensive Team nods.