Texas Tech basketball: Experts see Red Raiders as fringe tournament team

Despite making a run to the Elite 8 last season, most national college basketball experts have the Red Raiders as only a fringe NCAA Tournament team.

There has never been more excitement for a Texas Tech basketball season than there is for the 2018-19 campaign, which begins tomorrow.  With over 7,000 season tickets sold (a program record), the best incoming recruiting class in program history and one of the best coaches in the sport, Red Raider basketball is the hottest ticket in Lubbock.

But most national experts are skeptical about the Red Raiders’ ability to maintain the momentum from last year’s historic run to the Elite 8.  In fact, it is hard to find any national pundit that sees Chris Beard’s team as anything other than a fringe NCAA Tournament team.

In fact, one of the more respected analysts in the sport, Andy Katz formerly of ESPN and now with the Big 10 Network does not even have Texas Tech in his first 2019 bracket.  He has six Big 12 teams in his initial field including Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Texas, TCU and West Virginia.

Meanwhile, Jerry Palm of CBSSports.com has the Red Raiders as one of the eight teams to play in the first round of games commonly referred to as “the first four”.  Palm puts Tech as a 12-seed facing off with Vanderbilt which indicates that the Red Raiders are one of the four lowest seeded at-large teams in his bracket.

Our friend Lukas Harkins over at FanSided’s Busting Brackets puts the Red Raiders in his first bracket as a No. 8 seed.  The problem with being a No. 8 seed is that it means a likely showdown with a No. 1 seed in the second game of the tournament.  In Harkins’ bracket, that would be Gonzaga in a rematch of the 2005 second round game that No. 6 Texas Tech win over the No. 3 Bulldogs 71-69 to put the Red Raiders in the Sweet 16.

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Joe Lunardi over at ESPN is a little more optimistic about the Red Raiders.  He has Tech has a No. 7 seed taking on Indiana in the Bob Knight bowl.  If only that could have actually happened in the early 2000’s.

Finally, the analytics-based website TeamRankings.com has the Red Raiders as a No. 6 seed in their first projected field.  This site uses computer simulations to assemble its field and it gives Texas Tech a 42% chance at earning an at-large bid.

Of course, all of these projections are worthless.  They will change after every week and are just intended to provide fans with some talking points.

But what we can take away from the first brackets is how people outside of the Red Raider fan base view this year’s team.  It seems that most think that last year’s run was more of an anomaly than a sign that Texas Tech basketball has arrived as a legitimate force on the national scene.

The experts also seem to be putting quite a bit of stock into the work of the five seniors that Texas Tech lost after last season.  Though Tech has brought in two of the top graduate transfers in the nation and a highly-regarded recruiting class, they are not being given the benefit of the doubt.

Fortunately, polls and projections are less important in college basketball than in football because 68 teams make the playoff event in hoops.  And last year, Texas Tech was projected to finish 7th in the Big 12 before finishing second in the league and earning a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Most Red Raider fans that follow this program closely are far more confident in this year’s team than the national scribes.  Fortunately, tomorrow night we will begin to see who is right.