Texas Tech basketball: 5 early-season games that will loom large in March
How the Texas Tech basketball team does in these five early-season games will be a factor in the team’s NCAA seeding when March rolls around.
On Tuesday night, the Texas Tech basketball team will lace up its sneakers for the first regular-season game of the 2019-20 season. (Does anyone call them sneakers anymore? Well, we’ll roll with that term for now.) Finally, Red Raider fans will have an opportunity to move forward after chewing on the disappointment of the way last season ended for 210 days as the quest for another shot at the ultimate prize begins anew.
To say that expectations are at an all-time high would be a bit of an understatement. Just a year after being considered a fringe NCAA Tournament team to open last season, Chris Beard and his program have earned the benefit of the doubt from virtually the entire college basketball world.
CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm has Tech as a No. 3 seed in his latest tournament projection. That would be the third year in a row for the Red Raiders to earn that seeding. Interestingly, he has the Red Raiders facing No. 6 seed Auburn in his second round in what would be a matchup of teams that should have played for last season’s National Title had the referees not blown a late-game call when the Tigers faced Virginia in the Final Four.
ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has Tech as a No. 4 seed. Interestingly, the No. 1 seed in that region of his bracket is Louisville, one of the teams we will discuss in just a moment.
If the Red Raiders do return to the Big Dance for the third-straight season, it would be a first in program history. Thus far, the best period of success the Red Raiders have ever experienced came 15 years ago but with a familiar face on the bench.
From 2002-05, the Red Raiders went to the NCAA Tournament in three of four seasons while reaching the N.I.T. once (2003). Of course, the head coach at the time was the legendary Bob Knight who had on his staff an assistant named Chris Beard.
In 2005, Knight guided his team to the Sweet 16 marking just the fifth time in program history that the Red Raiders had been that deep into the tournament. Of course, after the last two years, winning just two games in the tournament would likely be a disappointment to many fans.
However, the more reasonable among the fanbase certainly understand just how tough it can be to simply survive the first weekend of the tournament. To be one of the final 16 teams left in the fight is nothing to take for granted and if Tech wants to get to that point again this year, it would be in the Red Raiders’ best interest to once again earn a favorable seeding.
For that to happen, this season will have to measure up to each of the past two when Tech lost a combined 13 regular-season games. It will be imperative that this team gets off to a strong start in the pre-conference slate of games as it has in each of the past two years when it has gone 11-1.
That’s going to be no easy task given how young the rebuilt roster is and how tough the November and December schedule is. But make no mistake, plenty of the games that this team plays prior to the start of Big 12 play will be looked at closely when the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee meets in March.
When it does, it will likely point to the following contests are a significant part of how it seeds Beard’s team. Interestingly, all five of these games come consecutively making this a true test of what life in the Big 12 could be like. So let’s break down the critical stretch of games that will define the first half of this season.