Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Not since LeBron James in a 2007 NBA playoff game can I remember a single player taking over his team's scoring load to the degree that Texas Tech's Mike Singletary did in tonight's opening-round win by the Red Raiders over Texas A&M in the Big 12 tournament, 88-83.

In addition to Singletary's offensive prowess, the game was also noteworthy for Texas Tech's big comeback. A&M had led by 21 points early in the second half and by 18 with roughly 15 minutes left in the game. After a few different Red Raiders contributed points to cut the lead to 10 with roughly 10 minutes remaining, Singletary took over.

The graphic below documents what happened. I've copied and pasted part of ESPN.com's play-by-play sheet, editing out Texas A&M's side of the ledger and annotating all of Singletary's shots within the relevant time frame (green and red for field-goal attempts, blue for free-throw attempts; numbers equal point values and an "x" is for a miss). You can click on the chart to enlarge it.


From this chart, one can see several aspects of Singletary's amazing performance:

*He scored 29 straight Texas Tech points, part of his total of 43 points on the night.

*He made 9 out of 10 field-goal attempts, including a perfect 3-of-3 on threes. At a muscular 6-6, 230 pounds, Singletary arguably looks more like a linebacker than an outside-shooting specialist, and indeed he really hasn't jacked up many trey attempts during his time at Texas Tech (career statistics). As best I can tell, Singletary is not related to the legendary former NFL linebacker bearing the same name.

*He made 8 out of 10 free throws (not exactly amazing, but not bad, either).

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