Lubbock, Texas ? Maybe it is fear of incurring the wrath of a coach with an explosive temper.

Or simply the fact Texas Tech has a roster full of smart basketball players who only shoot when wide-open.

Whatever the reason, Bob Knight’s Red Raiders rarely hoist three-pointers.

“Under coach Knight, shot selection has always been pretty important down there,” KU coach Bill Self said.

His Jayhawks (16-2, 3-0 Big 12) meet the Red Raiders (13-5, 2-1) – the team with the fewest three-point attempts in the Big 12 – in a 3 p.m. tipoff today at United Spirit Arena.

It will be shown live on ESPN, Sunflower Broadband channels 33 and 233.

“Coach Knight’s teams have not shot a lot of threes, but they make most of their attempts,” Self quickly added.

The Red Raiders enter today’s game having attempted a conference-low 235 threes. Tech has 104 makes, good for a league-best 44.3 shooting percentage.

“They do a great job of knocking them down,” Self said.

Big 12 player of the year candidate Jarrius Jackson, who averages 20.8 points and 3.5 rebounds a game, has made 46 of 91 threes for 50.5 percent.

Charlie Burgess, like Jackson a 6-foot-1 junior, has made 18 of 36 for 50 percent. Darryl Dora, a 6-9 senior, has made nine of 22 for 40.9 percent, and Benny Valentine, a 5-7 sophomore, has hit 10 of 31 for 32.3 percent.

“I’d just like to see it eliminated,” Knight groused when referring to the three. “It is not good for basketball. The zone defense is a challenge. The game has to have challenges. We shouldn’t have any gimmicks at our disposal.”

The sometimes colorful, oft-times crabby coach, added: “I don’t think it is at a distance that difficult (19 feet, 9 inches). Diving is an interesting thing. They give a degree of difficulty in diving. I think we should give a guy who takes that a degree of difficulty.”

The Red Raiders, who have beaten Oklahoma at home and Kansas State on the road and lost at Baylor, are not stuck in the Dark Ages in terms of scoring, despite lack of interest in the three.

They average 74.1 points a game off 47.2 percent shooting, while allowing 66.6 points a game off 43.4 percent marksmanship.

Jackson is joined in double-figure scoring by Martin Zeno (16.4) and Burgess (10.1).

“Coach Knight’s teams always guard. It should be a tough game,” Self said. “They get out and pressure. I feel they have an NCAA Tournament team. We’re going to have to play well to win.”

Texas Tech's Martin Zeno, front, goes to the basket in front of Baylor's Mamadou Diene in this photo from Saturday's game in Waco, Texas. Zeno is the Red Raiders' second-leading scorer at 16.4 points per game.

The Red Raiders will likely have a motivated player in Jackson, who scored 17 points off 7-of-19 shooting in the Jayhawks’ 86-52 rout of Tech last season at Allen Fieldhouse.

“We did a good job defending him last year,” Self said. “They did miss some shots they normally make. We know how good they are.”

How good?

“Last year coach Knight had a good team, but a team that probably didn’t have the weapons needed to make a serious run in the league. They have the weapons now,” Self said of a squad that had top-quality nonconference wins over Arkansas, Bucknell and New Mexico, with losses to the likes of Marquette, Air Force, Stanford and UNLV.

“Burgess is a big difference-maker. They have bigger bodies and good screeners.”

In fact, all the hard screens can wear down a Tech opponent.

“I think it’s kind of tough because they have all kind of weapons,” KU sophomore forward Brandon Rush said. “Jackson and Zeno are their go-to players. Jackson is a shooter and Zeno is a driver, so it’s kind of hard to guard when the screen’s coming out of nowhere. It wears you out. I don’t think it’ll wear me out more worse than the Missouri game (an 80-77 KU victory on Monday) because that was tough running up and down the court with that team.”

The screening is also tough on KU’s inside players.

“Their offense is pretty tight,” KU freshman forward Darrell Arthur said. “They’ve got an offense set, they run the clock out. So it’s going to be hard just staying in there and holding position. It’s going to be a heated-up game because we beat them pretty bad last year, so they are going to come at us pretty strong playing at home.”

It’s at United Spirit Arena where the Jayhawks fell to the Raiders, 80-79, in a two-overtime thriller two seasons ago in Lubbock. Dora made a three with three seconds left in the second OT to give the Red Raiders the win.

“I just remember we had a hard time in the zone and guarding the baseline and a couple of guys just took advantage of that – our weaknesses on the baseline,” KU junior Russell Robinson said.

Veteran coach Knight realizes it’s tough to beat the Jayhawks anywhere.

“They have good depth. They have really good play all over the floor,” Knight said.

“The most difficult team to play against is one that can attack the basket offensively from every spot on the floor. Kansas can do that. The next most difficult team to play against is one that can attack the basket and then can play at the other end. This is simply a very good team that does all the things that have to be done well.”