Texas Tech basketball: The top games of Matt Mooney’s Red Raider career
With these five performances, Matt Mooney made a tremendous impact on the Texas Tech basketball program.
One of the biggest stories involving the Texas Tech basketball program last summer was the recruitment of grad transfer Matt Mooney. Now that we are able to look back on his senior season with the Red Raiders, it is easy to see why he was such a coveted target for Chris Beard and so many other programs.
After averaging over 17 points per game in two seasons at South Dakota, the Chicago native longed for an opportunity to reach the NCAA Tournament in his final collegiate go-round. Narrowing his choices to Texas Tech and his hometown Northwestern, Mooney had to make a tremendously difficult decision. Ultimately, he decided to become a Red Raider, making Lubbock his third stop in college after starting his career with a season at Air Force.
Tech and Matt Mooney proved to be a fantastic fit but not necessarily in the manner that most expected. One of the top shooters in the nation at South Dakota, it was presumed that Mooney would be a key offensive force for a Red Raider team having to replace six of its top eight scorers from 2018’s Elite 8 team and he certainly helped in that regard.
Averaging 11.3 points per game, the 6-foot-3 guard finished the year as the team’s third-leading scorer behind Jarrett Culver and Davide Moretti. Surprisingly, he led Tech in scoring only twice but he was an invaluable cog in the offense as the team’s fortunes often mirrored his performance.
Shooting 42.6% from the field, Mooney hit 38.6% of his shots from 3-point range, 1.8% better than his career average. With 49 baskets from long-distance, he was tied with Culver for second on the team, 24 behind Moretti’s 73.
But it was on the defensive end where Mooney made his most surprising and meaningful impact. Arriving with the reputation for being a sniper on the other end of the court, virtually no one thought that he would become the team’s best on-ball defender.
Perhaps Mooney himself did not realize how good he could be defensively until he began to work with Beard and defensive guru Mark Adams. Realizing how to use his unusually long arms to disrupt passing lanes and harass ball-handlers, Mooney took the defensive principles he learned from his new coaching staff and became a Big 12 All-Defensive Team selection.
Interestingly, Mooney picked up some of his defensive acumen from another pesky, hard-nosed, former Big 12 point guard, Kirk Hinrich, a midwest native, and childhood hero to Mooney who starred at Kansas in the early 2000s. The former Chicago Bull trained with Mooney last offseason. and what Mooney gleaned from the long-time NBA veteran combined with his own hard work paid off to the tune of a team-leading 70 steals.
"“This place has really challenged me,” Mooney said of Texas Tech while at the Final Four in April. “and you can’t play here if you don’t guard.”"
As most Texas Tech basketball fans know, the 2018-19 version of the Red Raiders played defense at a historic level in terms of defensive efficiency giving up just 0.86 points per 100 possessions. Mooney was one of five players in Beard’s 8-man rotation with an individual defensive efficiency rating below 90, which is impressive considering the amount of time he spent guarding the opposition’s best ball-handler.
Though we did not know it at the time he committed to the Red Raiders, Mooney proved to be a natural Red Raider. Initially overlooked by most (he had just one Division I offer out of high school), Mooney had to earn everything in college basketball through grit and determination.
Unfortunately, we only got to see him don the Double-T 38 times but in those games, he left an indelible mark on the program as a starter and key contributor on the best team in Red Raider basketball history. Let’s take a last look back at Mooney’s brief but unforgettable Texas Tech career by reliving his five best games.