Grant McCasland adopted the motto “Team’s Toughest Wins” when he took over as Texas Tech’s head basketball coach. In his first year and a half at the helm, the Red Raiders have not been consistent in meeting those standards.
McCasland knows it’s sometimes difficult to get that toughness and edge out of his team. That was never more evident than in the Big 12 Conference opener against UCF. The Knights beat the Red Raiders on their home field in what was a pivotal moment for Texas Tech.
On the horizon were two tough road games through Utah State, followed by a series of tough matchups against some of the best teams in the conference. Had the Red Raiders not learned their lesson and taken action, a once-promising season could have been lost before it truly began.
Saturday’s 93-65 win over Utah was a good start, but McCasland knew a trip to the Marriott Center in Provo, facing a BYU team eerily similar to his Texas Tech team, was going to be a tougher challenge. To counter it, the Red Raiders changed their approach before Tuesday’s game.
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“We don’t usually practice in these kinds of tough environments and I just felt like our team had to have an edge in the way we competed,” McCasland said after the 72-67 victory, “because we let’s not do it. I have a ton of experience in guard sports, especially at point, and we don’t have experienced defenders on our team who are considered top defenders.
“We practiced really hard last night for an hour and a half and our guys are accepting it. The first one at Utah I thought was more about our preparation, but this one I felt like that we had kind of built up as the match went on and I thought we got more competitive and tougher as it went on.”
Texas Tech didn’t get its full rotation of available players at one time until just before this UCF game. A lack of practice time together and an ever-changing corps rotation made the league opener a challenge Tech hadn’t faced this season.
Staying in Utah between games, the Red Raiders had time to figure things out. This included increasing the intensity of their training to prepare for the Cougars.
“To me, it’s just a mindset that our guys believe in,” McCasland said. “There are no 5-on-0 wellness workouts right now. We have a lot of guts in our workouts and it’s a credit to these guys who believe in it and allow us to train them and fight with them.”
Changing the approach paid off. The Red Raiders and Cougars battled throughout the night before Darrion Williams (18 points, seven rebounds, four assists) and Chance McMillian (16 points, eight rebounds) combined for 18 straight points as Texas Tech could stand out from the game. far.
Williams especially got some attention on himself after the UCF game. McCasland said after the opener that regardless of whether players were in the Big 12 before or not, they wouldn’t play if they didn’t contribute defensively.
Without calling him out directly, McCasland was talking about Williams, the team’s only Big 12 player on the roster. Williams had a rough time on defense against UCF, which contributed to a poor offensive performance in Tech’s 87-83 loss.
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Williams responded in a big way on the road trip. He totaled 19 points, nine assists and five rebounds against the overmatched Utes and took over against BYU. Recording for the final time with 10:31 remaining, Williams scored or assisted on six of Tech’s final nine shots of the game.
“KenPom has their rankings of the best players in college basketball and he’s a Top 10 player in the country by any standard,” McCasland said. “We lost a home game to Central Florida and he struggled and that carried over into what we did defensively, unfortunately, in that game.
“This one, even when the game slowed down, I saw a different look in his eyes defensively. And that’s where Darrion Williams is such a great leader for us.”
After being held to two points on one shot attempt in the first half, McMillian scored 14 points on 5-of-8 shooting in the second half. Like Williams, his roommate, McMillian knew how important the win in Provo was to Tech’s bottom line, proving that the Red Raiders are pretty tough.
“It’s a real confidence booster for us,” McMillian said. “We’re definitely going to continue this momentum as we continue to watch film and get better every day.”
This article was originally published in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech basketball needed to get tougher for wins over Utah and BYU
