FORT WORTH — Career-highs seem to be all the rage for the No. 15 Texas Tech basketball team these days.

It took a career-best 32 points from Pop Isaacs to help the Red Raiders come back to down BYU. And Chance McMillian's marks of 27 points and eight rebounds did the job against Oklahoma on Saturday.

Against 25th-ranked TCU in Schollmaier Arena on Tuesday night, two Red Raiders had their highest career total in separate categories. One was a major positive with Isaacs dishing out nine assists. Joe Toussaint had nine helpers as well, though it was the other half of the assist-to-turnover ratio that plagued the super-senior point guard.

Toussaint finished with a career-high eight turnovers against the Horned Frogs. The rest of the Red Raiders had five giveaways in the 85-78 loss.

Grant McCasland isn't worried about that number, though. Toussaint, who never had more than five turnovers in a game previously, was asked to orchestrate a new flow of offense to help Texas Tech offset the Horned Frogs' side defense, and it worked for the most part. The Red Raiders had 23 assists on their 27 made shots.

"When you're in one- or two-day preps playing on the road against an experienced team," McCasland said, "you kind of need all the pieces to go well. You can't have one guy knowing what he's doing or three guys knowing what they're doing. All five guys need to know what they're doing, and a few times it wasn't his fault.

ABOUT THE GAME: No. 15 Texas Tech basketball stumbles in road loss to No. 25 TCU: 3 takeaways

"It was kind of like two of the pieces didn't know, and that's on me. I've got to do a better job of helping Joe in those spots to make the right decisions."

Toussaint's turnovers weren't the end-all, be-all in the seven-point loss. All things considered, Tuesday's setback amplified something McCasland knew beforehand.

When it comes to life in the Big 12, the margin for error is very, very thin, especially on the road.

Texas Tech's historic offense was firing on all cylinders again. The Red Raiders shot 51.9% from the field, hit 14 of their 28 3-point attempts and were 10-of-14 from the free throw line.

But career-highs work both ways. TCU got one such performance from Micah Peavy, the former Red Raider who went 4-for-4 from beyond the arc. The Horned Frogs also tied their season-high with 11 made 3s in the game.

Peavy was wide open on his 3-point attempts because, well, he should've been. He entered Tuesday's game shooting under 25% from 3 on the season, having gone three straight games without a make from deep. The Red Raiders couldn't have banked on Peavy entering flamethrower mode for a game any more than they could've guessed Toussaint would've had his eight turnovers.

Tech could have predicted its eight-man rotation getting a bit thin at points this season, though. Foul trouble from Darrion Williams, Warren Washington and Kerwin Walton put the Red Raiders in a bind in the first half. That allowed TCU to go on a 21-3 run to flip the game.

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Oklahoma had a similar run in Tech's last game. The Sooners went on a 19-4 spurt in the first half the Red Raiders were able to overcome for the win thanks to McMillian. But as Tech tried one more time to mount another road comeback, McMillian appeared to tweak his leg in the final minutes against TCU. He tried to give it a go with 2:25 left, but was noticeably gimpy and quickly subbed back out, taking his 44% marksmanship from 3 with him.

Added all together — the turnovers, Peavy's shooting and thin bench — the result is still just a loss on the road to a nationally-ranked team — Tech's fourth such opponent in a row. The sky's not falling anytime soon. Just some clouds and shadows for a bit.

For a team like Texas Tech, the margins are always going to be thin. It has been able to cover up for them to this point. That formula just won't work every night, and McCasland knows that. It's his job to help fill in those gaps.

"It didn't take this game to know that margins are thin in this league," McCasland said. "I can tell you what it is. I've told these guys what it is, but the expectation is what it is. We play this game to win this league. We don't play this schedule to see how it works out. The expectation's the same every night.

"Unfortunately, I didn't do a good enough job to help our team in this situation to win this one."

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: In Texas Tech basketball's quest for Big 12 crown, the margin for error remains thin