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Frustrated Knight ‘too old to coach’

Texas Tech coach upset after team nearly blows game to TCU

Bob Knight didn’t hide any frustration about his team’s mistakes in Texas Tech’s 67-60 victory over TCU on Wednesday night.

There were turnovers and some bad shot selection as the Red Raiders squandered two 15-point leads in the second half and they made only one field goal over the final 8:43.

“I might be too old to coach because these are things I have a tough time handling,” Knight said. “We got points out of four players, and that’s it. We will have no chance when we play the teams we have to play unless we get a turnaround going and quit making mistakes.”

Knight allowed no players to attend the postgame news conference, spoke for less than five minutes and took no questions from reporters.

Andre Emmett scored 27 points, Jarrius Jackson had 19 points, Robert Tomaszek added 17 and Devonne Giles had four for the Red Raiders.

Tech (7-2) built a 15-point lead twice in the second half but the Horned Frogs (2-5) used an 8-0 run late in the game to whittle the deficit to 63-59 on a 3-pointer and a field goal by Marcus Shropshire with 2:48 remaining. They could get no closer.

“We’ve been in situations like this before where we are in a really good position and we just have a tough time with both getting behind and trying to come back and getting ahead and holding the lead,” Knight said.

Emmett has scored at least 23 points in six of the past seven games.

TCU’s first effort to stay close in the second half was helped along by Shropshire, who played at Texas Tech during Knight’s first season as coach there. He scored eight straight points for the Horned Frogs on a 15-footer and consecutive 3-pointers.

Shropshire got 16 of his 18 points in the second half, going 4-of-8 on 3s.

“When he transferred to TCU, one of his first questions was, ’Are we going to play Texas Tech?”’ TCU coach Neil Dougherty said. “He was too excited maybe in the first half. He missed some shots I’ve never seen him miss. In the second half, he settled down and made some nice plays for us.”

Corey Santee scored 16 points and Nucleus Smith added 13 for TCU.

After the game, Knight spoke to Shropshire briefly.

“I’ll keep that between me and him, but basically he told me he was happy for me and wished me good luck,” Shropshire said.

© 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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