McCasland Looks Ahead to the UCF Knights
After scoring 90 points en rout to taking down the Houston Cougars, the Texas Tech men’s basketball team is bound for Orlando, Florida to square off with the UCF Knights. Head coach Grant McCasland met with the media today to preview the upcoming matchup with UCF.
Handling UCF’s Offense and Winning the Board Battle
McCasland knows the Knights have a lot of confidence when defending home court as he sees them as one of the best in that category, and will have a challenge with their dynamic scorers. To top it all off, the Knights just jumped to the top of the Big 12 following the Red Raiders’ victory over U of H in dominating the rebounding game.
“We showed a scouting report of our team to them today and really dove into their personell. They just got elite scoring talent on their team. Guys that all their lives have been great scorers honestly, and they’re physical. If there’s one thing that jumps out on the page for me watching them is just how physical they are. They’re the number one defensive rebounding team in our league. We were number one until we played Houston. I just think they’re physical, and they can score, and they have a lot of guys that can put you on your heels so we know that coach (Johnny) Dawkins is one of the best coaches, and a great guy. Their team is playing well and our defense and rebounding is going to have to be great.”
The Importance of Not Overlooking Opponents
Even though the Red Raiders have a quick turnaround with the Kansas Jayhawks coming to town on Monday, McCasland knows that the mistakes made from the Houston game can occur at any time in this league if not taken seriously.
“Our team has been really connected to what is the task at hand, and that’s not been a problem with our group. I think because of our lack of success early in games where we haven’t played maybe great we have everybody’s attention on how much we need to improve to get better. And I told our guys after the Houston game, I mean everybody else is telling our guys how good they are, and I was about as hard on them as I’ve been all year long in that Houston film. Because the truth is they did get more offensive rebounds than we wanted them to get, and we didn’t do a great job on the defensive glass. And the truth is even though the result is what we wanted it to be, our defensive numbers weren’t great, and give Houston credit for that. I think it’s clear with our group that we got a long way to go to get where we need to get. And did we take a step in the right direction in the Houston game? For sure! But we’re not playing our best and our guys know that. I think that’s been the tension of this team is how can we keep getting better and our guys are embracing that.”
Health Improvement from the Bench
McCasland made the announcement that guys like Marial Akuentok, Luke Bamboye, and Josiah Moseley are reaching a point where they can come in for more minutes giving the starters more rest, as well as providing help if there comes a time with foul trouble. There’s a great hope each of them will provide a spark off the bench sooner than later.
“We took a couple of days off intentionally. We did some individual work with guys on Monday, and then Tuesday we got a practice that was a majority of the guys that don’t play a ton so that we can start to push this thing in the direction. Then Wednesday we did more individual work, and then today really did a lot of team work but it’s been a good ramp for the guys that haven’t played much. Because we’ve been able to put them in a pretty consistent amount of practice that will replicate what we’ll see in games to see how they respond. Although there wasn’t a game to play this week, I do think the guys that haven’t played as much made a big jump. Just because we got to really focus our attention on their ability to improve whether it’s through film and practice, or getting them in a 1-on-1 setting where we can really fine tune the things that we saw in the Houston game that weren’t done well. So it’s been a good week for the new guys to get more reps.”
The Emergence of Tyree Bryan
We’ve seen since the BYU game how Tyree Bryan has really stepped up his game and gives his all on what this team plans to accomplish. McCasland took notice from both the Baylor game and the Houston game how Bryan will play a major role in the rotation going forward.
“He’s told several people around, I’m not fighting how difficult this is, because it is difficult to do what we’re asking. Literally all his attention is how do I do what the team needs, and he had an unbelievable practice. I actually stopped practice twice today, and brought the entire team over and showed clips of Tyree playing defense. It was after I had coached him pretty hard on a possession where he didnt do it right. His resilience and belief in what we’re doing is through the roof. It really is. And it’s allowing him to continue to improve, there’s more trust with his teammates, and there’s more trust with the staff. We’ve always known he’s the talent to, but it takes some time to understand just how difficult this is to go through the failure and then decide “I’m going to put everything into this!” and he’s doing that right now and he’s playing at a really high level. He probably made the biggest play of the game, and driving to the basket and getting a 2-pointer when we were really stalled out late
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