McCasland Looking to Ramp Up Grit and Physicality After Loss to TCU
It was deja vu once again for the 10th ranked Texas Tech men’s basketball team immediately following another top 10 win as they fell short to the TCU Horned Frogs in their home finale 73-65. The fact that it fell on senior night with players like Donovan Atwell, Tyree Bryan, and Jack Francis playing for the final time in front of the 806 home crowd in a Red Raider uniform was insult to injury.
Needless to say, the history books will say the night ended in another agonizing defeat to an inferior opponent coming off major momentum from handing the Iowa State Cyclones their first home loss of the year. Head Coach Grant McCasland met with the media after the game to discuss his thoughts on what went wrong in the matchup with the Horned Frogs.
History Repeating Itself
Throughout this season, the Red Raiders have garnered impressive wins to their resume to which would categorize them as a force to be reckoned with in all of college basketball. Wins including #6 Houston, #1 Arizona, and #4 Iowa State. However, coming right out of the gate from those triumphs, the Red Raiders would drop to opponents whom Tech was double-digit favorites over prior to tipoff. Programs like UCF, Arizona State, and TCU who were all unranked. McCasland voiced his concern level on this narrative, and how he plans to address it with the postseason on the horizon.
“Because of the nature of how it’s turned out, yes. I do think that when you play a really physical team, it does take a lot out of us because we have skill. And if you were to characterize our players, you wouldn’t say that we’re a physically imposing team. Even though we have physical talent, we have great scoring and shooting in the perimeter, and the guard spots. I mean, we’re not we’re not huge physically around the basket. LeJuan Watts and Luke (Bamgboye), LeJuan is skilled more so. And Luke’s a vertical athlete. And I think what we have is a good combination of basketball players, but I wouldn’t call us physical. We have to we have really ramp that up. And I do think that you could see it takes it out of us when we play a really physical and then you got to turn around and play in a short amount of time. So am I concerned about it? Yes, but I’m not concerned about necessarily just the physical play, it’s the fight that we got to have in order to be successful. And I did think that we had the depth, because I loved it when you throw Tyree in there, and maybe some of his forwards in there and the way he wanted to play, but then you start to get down offensively, and you’re trying to find that mix of what you want to keep putting out there. I got to do a better job making sure that we can maintain physicality and still put pressure on other teams in the way we play offense. Maybe we’re going to have to choose one or the other at some point, just to try to separate. But it’s definitely concerning, and it’s a part of this game that we got to get a grip on before we get into these games that are elimination games.”
Christian Anderson’s Dip in Assist to Turnover Ratio
In one of the nights where the turnover statistic was not on the Red Raiders’ side, it got worse when TCU to their credit had an answer for Christian Anderson. McCasland expressed the goal of limiting turnovers in games where its more costly if not taken seriously.
“We made some substitutions. And, you know, give TCU a lot of credit. Give these teams we’re playing for credit. We’re talking about Cincinnati, Iowa State, and this team (TCU) is second in turning people over percentage wise So I mean, it’s not like it’s a shock. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully, toward Christian. Just when we had JT (Toppin) in the middle, I think it made it easier for him to pass to a guy that can make the next pass. And so we went to more of a guard involvement, so that we didn’t just put those forwards in positions where we have to make a bunch of decisions. And I think it’s caused us to turn the ball over more than we wanted to. Dribbled it more than we wanted to. And make him try to create some things out of nothing and that’s caused some turnovers. And we just got to keep working and keep getting guys in better confidence and positions where they can make the right play and get to the next action and we can keep getting better.”
Points of Emphasis Before the Showdown In Provo
With the 2025-2026 season on the midst of wrapping up, and tournament seedings just around the corner, Texas Tech will have one final test to the Richie Saunders-less BYU Cougars on their home court who recently have fallen out of the AP top 25 due to a three-game skid. And it’s no question the Cougs are looking for vengeance after the Red Raiders took them down 84-71 on January 17th at United Supermarkets Arena. And by the way, at that time, held star freshman AJ Dybantsa to a season low 13 points. McCasland is optimistic due to winning three of the last four games since losing JT Toppin for the season, and seeing how they’ve improved over the course of the season.
“We’ve improved over the last four games pretty consistently in every area. I thought we were prepared for tonight. But, you know, Coach Dixon and TCU have been doing this to a lot of teams, and they’ve been rebounding, and they’ve been getting the foul line. So they got Luke and foul
trouble, which was a real tough component for what we were facing. (Xavier) Edmonds’ and (David) Punch’s ability to offensive rebound. And two, I mean, I just love that we get to be exposed now so that we can learn from it. I mean, that’s what I’m excited about. So going into BYU, I mean, this has been our deal, when we were scrapping on the glass, and we can get 50-50s and turn people over, and come up with all those in between plays. We’re awesome. And when we don’t, this is what we get. So leaning into that and keep improving our guys where they embrace it to on nights where maybe it feels hard because those guys are good, really good. I mean, I love their team and how they attack the glass, awesome to watch. And we just didn’t have the right fight to do it. And maybe we’ll get better because of it.
If the Double Bye Will Help Correct Mistakes
With the Red Raiders locking in the top 4 seed for the Big 12 tournament next week, McCasland believes the rest time does provide a buffer after BYU to refocus and fine tune any corrections to make a post-season run.
“Definitely! I’m blessed that I get to coach at Texas Tech. I’m so thankful to be on this team. I’m telling you our practices are awesome. Coaching in the United supermarkets arena is awesome. I mean, our fans today were unbelievable. Our students have been unbelievable all year long. I mean, this journey has been pretty wild, and there’s a lot of ups and downs that go with it. And I’ve been on a team that lost two home games with the chance to clinch conference championships at home. And then went on a four game stretch where we won the conference tournament and beat Purdue in the NCAA Tournament. So I’d like to tell y’all everybody has the answers to why we won’t do anything in postseason. I can tell you, I can give you a lot of reasons why we will. And that’s my heart for this group, and that’s the way we’re going to approach it, just like our fans were there for us tonight. Where everybody was I’m going to be there for our guys to help us get better. And it’s with accountability and love and hope. It’s not like you can’t do it. It’s like, No, I’ve seen us do it. I can pull up 50 clips of LeJuan wedging somebody and going and grabbing that thing with two hands. So I’m going to convince him that we can do this against the best teams in the country every night, not just some nights. To your point, we can’t do this one night and then turn around and lay an egg the next one. I mean, that’s not the way the NCAA Tournament works. You’re going to play two games on a weekend. If you win, you got to turn around and play somebody that’s going to be better and more physical, and got an opportunity to expose you in real ways. And so we’ll stare this in the face, and I will as a coach to try to help our team have confidence in these games that we can do it. And we got to do that with some practice habits which are shortly going away. And I recognize that. I don’t feel like we’ll have this effort again on the glass. We’ll find ways to be more competitive than this. but TCU deserves a lot of credit. I’m not just saying that, like coach speak. I really mean that. I mean I think their physicality even the bigger guard spots at shoving us underneath the basket kind of caved us in over the course of the game. And with foul trouble, I did a crappy job of rotating us and keeping us fresh, and it felt like we got at the bottom of our tank, and I can’t do that with this group with our lack of physicality. Whether we have some lows offensively, it feels like this team just needs to stay with the energy on the defensive end and rebounding, and that’ll be what gives us the best chance to win these kinds of physical battles.”
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