McCasland Ecstatic Over Great Team Effort Versus K-State

Coming off the traumatizing series of events on Tuesday, the Texas Tech men’s basketball team took down the Kansas State Wildcats in dominating fashion. Head Coach Grant McCasland met with the media after the game to discuss his thoughts on the 100-72 victory.

Complimentary Basketball

The Texas Tech starters accounted for 88 points, 8 rejections, spacing was off the charts and McCasland applauded the relentless effort his team brought on both ends of the floor.

”We got great players! We really do! And shooting is always a big part of it. And I’ll tell you, I don’t know how to explain this to people, but these guys haven’t practiced that much together. And on January 28th we finally got all those guys together. I mean, Josiah Moseley just started practicing, Luke (Bamgboye) just started practicing. I think if you’re going specific, those two guys making an impact on our team. And then Marial (Akuentok), you can put in that group too because he played then got injured, then played, and now he wasn’t practicing much, but he’s practiced more. And had one of his best practices. So I think the numbers are somewhat similar in regards to LeJuan (Watts), Donovan (Atwell) Christian (Anderson) and Jaylen (Petty) and and Tyree (Bryan) for that matter. But what you’ve added is a guy, Josiah who hasn’t played and Luke who hasn’t played, and then now you’re seeing what Marial was capable of doing when he’s at least been able to practice. So man, what a fun game to be a part of! Just because it’s going to take everybody. We’re going to need everybody to be great.”

Assessment on the Pick and Roll Minus JT Toppin

We’ve seen all throughout his tenure that McCasland’s offense is predicated by the pick and roll. The fact that one of the key pieces is out for the season, McCasland shared his assessment on how it played out with the players filling in on JT Toppin’s vacancy.

”Well, I think what it did was we moved it, and Jalen Petty was playing off some. We just had different actions, and it freed Chris up to be more of a receiver on some, where he could drive it and play in space. And then we didn’t set some, we just gave space and we drove it and played in space. And I thought that Christian handled it unbelievably. And that’s where you you need a veteran point guard like Christian where you only have turned it over one time against the team that turned over Houston 15 times, and turned over Baylor 19 times in the last two games. And we turned it over 17 times. So I was concerned about that. And today we we turned it over six times. But I think, you know, in the first half, we just had three so I mean, it looked right in regards to the way we handled the basketball.”

Rotations and Substitution Patterns

McCasland is going through trial and error as far as what the rotation now will produce with certain players out there. In the first half of this game he went with Marial and LeJuan together, then pairing Luke and Josiah together. McCasland gave his take on the first game seeing those pairings together.

“There’s design. I’m one of those guys that likes to think through every scenario. I will say that, and I’m always asking our staff, like, ‘what if this happens?’ And they’re like, like, ‘Well, it hasn’t.’ I’m like, ‘Well, what if it does?’ And I say, ‘Well who do we want to play?’ And I got to be honest, mine has more to do with the fight and the look in your eye when I look at you, if you’re going to compete to help our team win. And if I see you’re locked in the how we’re going to play. And I don’t really know that because you never know. Somebody misses an easy shot and they look like they’re not ready to go anymore. I’m not looking at a lineup sheet of like, ‘this guy plays good with this guy.’ I’m like, ‘you gotta go, because I’m not going to let somebody not compete on this possession.’ Because every possession matters. So the resiliency at which our guys approach this allows me to feel confident in who plays more than I feel like combinations. But I will tell you, I love thinking about it, and we’ve looked at every scenario of how we need to play these guys, and there’s a lot of debate. I will tell you that. It’s not really clear who plays best yet, because we don’t have enough numbers. And if somebody says there’s enough numbers to tell you it’s not, there’s not enough statistics to give you real backup for this. So we’re going a little bit off of fight and will the win, and hopefully we’ll see some things that we like through these few games to give us a better pattern of how to do it. But today was more about let’s keep energy high, and let’s see what the matchups are, and let’s make sure that we feel good about who we’re guarding as much as who we’re going to play on offense. Where in the past, we’ve kind of played, who do we feel more on offense than the energy defensively? That was a shift in this, this approach.”

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