McCasland previews Texas Tech’s Big 12 Tournament
The 16th-ranked Texas Tech men’s basketball team is less than 48 hours away from embarking on its postseason run. With a trip to Kansas City, Missouri, for the Big 12 Tournament approaching, head coach Grant McCasland met with the media this afternoon to discuss his thoughts before Texas Tech plays its first game Thursday.
Preparation After the BYU Loss
McCasland said in his postgame press conference following the loss in Provo that “we need a couple of days.” and voiced how the staff came together during this time of rest to assess what aspects of their game needs fine tuning before the postseason run begins.
“We got a couple of days. This league is so grueling, and that every night you get an opportunity to play against one of the best teams in the country. This year our league has the best win percentage against all the other major leagues. Just shows you how difficult it can be every night. So we needed a couple of days, and more than anything, trying to fine tune how we want to move forward and what our holes are.
And gave us a time as a staff to just evaluate ‘OK, now we got a sample size in five games.’ You can actually look at some things that maybe we should tinker with, and make some changes on, and we feel like we got some things that we want to adjust. Not just rest. I think it’s important for our players to rest, but for our staff to kind of lean into some things that can make us a lot better with this run that we have coming up.”
His Thoughts on the New Court
Following the experience the Lady Raiders had with playing on the new-look floor the Big 12 displayed for this year’s tournament, fans were raising questions about whether the court has done more harm than good. However, McCasland believes it shouldn’t be a problem after watching some of the games today.
“In regards to the Big 12 tournament, what I love about our commissioner is he’s always on the front-end of everything. I think one talking point that people asked about is the court and how it does. A lot of people have said some things that they can improve it with. I think it’s improved over the course of play. It feels like watching the first couple of games here this morning that there’s been a real quality.”
Taking Care of Business in This Time in the Season
McCasland was asked how important it is for this team mentally to get at least one win here so they’re not entering the NCAA tournament on a 3-game losing streak. And he says there’s a couple of fixes technique wise, but he’s still positive the heart to compete and the effort is still there.
“I’ve been clear with our guys. I know people like to talk about streaks or whatever. I don’t really care about it honestly. As a coach, I look and see what do we need to improve on to give ourselves a chance to win the next game. And so do we want to win? 100 percent. We’re not going to Kansas City to do anything other than try to compete to win the Big 12 championship which would be an awesome accomplishment. Definitely put ourselves in position with the two-round bye to give ourselves the best chance to win it. Would we have liked to have won those last two games going into Big 12 conference play? 100 percent. I do know what we’re playing for, and I do like the attention our team is giving the things that we’re coaching them on.
It’s not for a lack of effort. The effort was watching the BYU game, and I thought against TCU we had some stretches where we weren’t competing at the highest level. Against BYU I thought we were competing, I just thought they bullied us at times on the glass. The ball bounces different ways, and maybe you get an opportunity. We shot a couple of air balls and we couldn’t grab them. I mean it’s always some random scenario that shows your effort, and I thought our effort was right. Just technique and attack needs to be a little bit better. So we got some time to shore that up. But in regards to how this ends, I’m more concentrating on how we get better for the next one than I am the result.”
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