Texas Tech basketball is headed to the Final Four!

For the first time in program history, the Texas Tech basketball team is headed to the Final Four after knocking off No. 1 seeded Gonzaga 75-69 Saturday evening.

This may be the sappiest, cheesiest and lamest thing I’ve written since I wrote an essay about my grandmother during my sophomore year of high school. As I write this, my hands are still shaking and my cheeks are still moist from trails of tears that I don’t ever want to wipe away and it is still impossible to put words to my emotions. But I don’t care. I’ll just say this…The Texas Tech basketball team is headed to the Final Four!

This is for everyone who has ever sat in a class in Holden Hall, thrown your guns up, tossed a tortilla at Jones Stadium, heard the victory bells ring out, sang the Matador song at the U.S.A. and given any piece of your heart and soul to the Texas Tech Red Raiders. Again I must say it because I still don’t fully believe it…the Texas Tech basketball team is headed to the Final Four!

After a gutty, bruising 75-69 win over top-seeded Gonzaga, Chris Beard and his team are headed to the game’s ultimate stage. Despite an off night from the field (5-18 overall and 2-8 from 3-point range), Lubbock native Jarrett Culver led the Red Raiders with 19 points while Matt Mooney added 17 and Davide Moretti came through with 12, including critical 3-pointers and free throws down the stretch.

But you don’t need a recap. You watched the game like I did; sweating through every possession as if you were in the game yourself. Pacing around your living room. Shouting at the television as if you were Chris Beard. Feeling your stomach drop with every shot and having your knees go weak with every rebound. You lived it with me. I felt you.

Instead, let’s talk about what this means for Texas Tech athletics and the university as a whole. Finally, a men’s program has reached the biggest event possible in one of the two major revenue sports, football and basketball. Now, along with the Texas Tech baseball team’s three College World Series appearances since 2014, we can say that another elite program resides in Lubbock, Texas.

After years of watching Cinderella teams like George Mason (2006), VCU (2011) and Loyola Chicago (2018) somehow make it to the tournament’s final weekend, it began to grown more and more frustrating to wish every year that Texas Tech would finally be the team that caught lightening in a bottle only to have the star we were wishing on come crashing down to Earth. But Red Raider fans would certainly have preferred no other path to the Final Four than the one this team took.

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For the second-consecutive year, the Red Raiders faced the highest possible seed they could in every game in their run through their region. And after coming up short last year to eventual national champion Villanova in the Elite 8, Tech felled one of the true giants in the game, Gonzaga, which many analysts said had fielded their best team in program history this season.

This run to the Final Four was no fluke. Rather, this was a statement about this basketball program, this athletic department and this university.

Something special is building on the plains of West Texas. Amid the rows of cotton, the rolling tumble weeds and ringing echos of Buddy Holly’s guitar, one of the better college programs in the nation is growing.

And now, the tenure of athletic director Kirby Hocutt has another major accomplishment to point to as it stakes its claim among the top athletic departments in the nation. Sure, it’s just sports, but sports are the front porch of a university where people from all over are introduced to everything else you have going on inside.

And what Texas Tech alums have known for nearly a century is that what has been happening out on the Caprock, where only the rugged dare to live, is one of the most remarkable success stories in the history of the American collegiate system. Forged by a level of hard work and a resilience that many other universities have not had to depend upon, a world-class university has arisen in the most unlikely of places.

Everyone who’s heart is in the shape of a Double-T has put up the the comments about Lubbock and absorbed the ridicule of people from other universities (and the fans of said universities that never sat in a single college class) and most of the time, ammunition to fire back with has been in short supply. But now, the college basketball world has no choice but to respect what Chris Beard has built which in-turn leads to respect for everything that Texas Tech has built.

"Sir. Isaac Newson famously said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”"

And that sentiment applies to this accomplishment. Chris Beard’s name will go down in history as the man that broke through to lead this program to the Final Four, but this is an accomplishment built upon the shoulders of men such as Dub Malaise, Gerald Meyers, Bubba Jennings, Rick Bullock, Tony Battie, Andre Emmett, Bob Knight and thousands more too countless to name here.

Next. Tech has done well against elite offenses this year. dark

And it was built upon the shoulders of everyone that is or ever has been a Red Raider. So tonight, enjoy some cheese logs from Spanky’s and go knock a few back at the Blue Light if you are in Lubbock or bear your Texas Tech banner far and wide if you are anywhere else. This is a special day. The Texas Tech basketball team is in the Final Four! Wreck ‘Em!

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