No. 14 Texas Tech travels to Colonial Life Arena on Saturday afternoon to take on South Carolina for their first meeting in 40 years.
The two are meeting for this year's SEC/Big 12 Challenge, which has 10 teams from each conference face each other for a mid-season competition. This is the fifth year of the challenge and South Carolina's first appearance in it since the 2014-2015 season. It gives the teams a chance to break-up their conference schedules and face some unique competition.
This will be South Carolina's fourth game against a ranked opponent in the past two weeks, most notably with wins at home against Kentucky and at Florida. Although they had a close loss against Tennessee, head coach Frank Martin is still proud of what his team has accomplished recently.
"We've made tremendous strides over the last two weeks," Martin said. "We just need to keep worried about that, stay the course and when we get to the finish line, we'll let everything fall where it may."
In terms of raw stats, Texas Tech (16-4) is outperforming South Carolina (13-7). The Gamecocks are averaging 70.7 points per game, while the Red Raiders are averaging 76.9 points per game.
South Carolina has struggled this year in shooting, which fans have seen a lot in recent games, with 40.6 percent from the field. Texas Tech hasn't been shooting that well from the field either, but still finding more success than the Gamecocks have, with 47.1 percent.
Despite these statistics, it will be a fight to see which team is going to limit their foul trouble and use shutouts on defense to their advantage.
The Gamecocks are led by junior forward Chris Silva. Silva leads the team in points, rebounds and blocks per game. Silva will be challenged in this game on offense to quickly put some points on the board for South Carolina.The pressure is on the Gamecocks' back as they hope to not let the unity within their team down as they face the Red Raiders.
The Gamecocks will have to put their defense to the test Saturday as they will have to strive to shutout the Red Raiders offensively in order to maintain a win.