Texas Tech basketball to face Iowa Hawkeyes in Las Vegas

On Thanksgiving Day, the Texas Tech basketball team will face off with Iowa in the Continental Tire Las Vegas Invitational.

We’ve known for some time that the Texas Tech basketball would participate in the Las Vegas Invitational this November. Now, we know that the Red Raiders will face the Iowa Hawkeyes out of the Big 10 to open the event on November 28th.

The Thanksgiving Day contest will see two 2019 NCAA tournament teams fight for the opportunity to play either San Diego State or Creighton on the 29th in the title game. This will be the 2019-20’s edition of the multi-team events (MTE) that each team is permitted to participate in each year. And under Chris Beard, the Red Raiders have had excellent success in MTEs.

Last year, the Red Raiders took down USC and Nebraska on consecutive nights to win the Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City. In 2017, Tech handled Boston College and dominated No. 20 Northwestern to claim the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame Tournament championship.

The only time Beard has failed to with a MTE while at Tech was in his first season, 2016-17, when the Red Raiders went 1-1 in the Cancun Invitational dropping a 67-65 game to Auburn before beating Utah State.

This two-game event kicks off a stretch of four interesting games that will reveal quite a lot about a Red Raider team that has only two of 13 scholarship players returning from the team that reached the National Title game in April. On December 4th, Beard’s team will participate in the first Big 12/Big East challenge by traveling to DePaul. Then, Tech travels to New York on December 10th to take on a Louisville team that is expected to be in the top-10 at Madison Square Garden.

Expect the Hawkeyes to be a tough challenge as well. Going 23-12 last year, Iowa reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament where they ran into Tennessee who eliminated them 83-77 in overtime.

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Like Tech though, the Hawkeyes lost a key contributor to early entry in the NBA Draft. While the Raiders saw sophomore Jarrett Culver taken No. 6, Iowa’s Tyler Cook was not drafted but has signed a two-way contract with the Denver Nuggets. Leaving after his junior season, Cook averaged 14.1 points, 6.7 rebounds and 1.8 assists in three years as a collegiate.

Meanwhile, guard Isaiah Moss also left the program this offseason. After scoring 9.5 points per game last year, he is committed to Kansas where he will be eligible as a grad transfer.

But head coach Fran McCaffery has some reinforcements on the way. Including one he should know rather well.

4-star forward Patrick McCaffery, Fran’s son, is set to join the roster this season. Rated the No. 86 player in the nation, he was the No. 19 small forward in the class of 2019 according to 247Sports.com.

Another key newcomer will be point guard Joe Toussiant, a 3-star player from New York City. He was the No. 6 player in New York last season and could help fill the shoes of Moss.

What’s more, for the first time ever, the Hawkeyes will welcome a graduate transfer to the program in 6-foot-2 guard Bakari Evelyn. Last year, he put up 8.4 points, 2.1 assists and was a 30.6-percent 3-point shooter at Valparaiso.

The Hawkeyes were not included in Andy Katz’s Power 36 teams when he released his latest power rankings back in May. However, they were just on the outside as the CBS Sports veteran college basketball analyst included them in his list of teams that he considered for inclusion on the list.

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With the Red Raiders bringing back only Davide Moretti and Kyler Edwards, Beard will have his work cut out for him in the non-conference portion of the schedule. And when the Red Raiders and Hawkeyes meet on Thanksgiving, it will be the first time we see this revamped Red Rader roster face a legitimate challenge, which will make this one of the more anticipated November games in quite some time.

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