Toddrick Gotcher scored a career high twenty-four points, nine of them in the opening minutes of the second-half to propel the Texas Tech Red Raider Basketball team to a 71-61 victory over the Oklahoma State Cowboys in Stillwater on Saturday night.

The game in Stillwater was hailed as a "trap game" for the Red Raiders after upsetting the third-ranked Oklahoma Sooners earlier in the week.

The Red Raiders and Cowboys were tied at 29-29 at the intermission in a tight game where the Cowboys hit seven shots from the three-point line and hitting fourteen from behind the arc for the game.

After jumping out to a ten point lead the Red Raiders would keep Oklahoma State at arms length the rest of the game as Tech shot fifty-one percent from the field, including fifty-seven percent from the three-point line.

The NCAA Tournament implications of the win for Texas Tech was huge. With a 17-9 record and now 7-7 Big 12 Conference record they are firmly in control of their own destiny for making the tournament now. ESPN Bracketology projections at the time of publication projected the Red Raiders as a 12-seed playing Butler in Dayton in the First Four while CBS projections have Texas Tech as an 8 seed playing UConn.

Texas Tech Head Coach Tubby Smith underscored the importance of the win for the Red Raiders in his post game comments.

"We felt like we played a good game and really grinded it out. We came here knowing Oklahoma State would play extremely hard," said Smith. "It was a momentum builder for us, we have been coming off of some big wins in the Big 12. We continued validating those wins by getting a win tonight. It certainly was an outstanding accomplishment by these young men.”

Texas Tech returns to action this coming week hosting TCU and then traveling to Lawrence to face second-ranked Kansas.

Now, time for some highlights!

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