Texas Basketball: What to expect from 2019-20 Red Raiders
The Texas Tech basketball season begins tonight amid unprecedented hype so let’s take a look at what might be in store in the fourth year of the Chris Beard era.
Texas Tech basketball is without question the most popular and in-demand commodity in West Texas since the advent of the cotton gin. That’s why tonight’s season opener against Eastern Illinois feels like few other openers in program history.
Though the Panthers are a mid-major program coming off a losing season, a full house is expected tonight at United Supermarkets Arena as the Red Raiders drop the 2019 Final Four and Big 12 Championship banners from the rafters. And this comes 20 years to the month after what was previously the most highly-anticipated season-opener in program history.
On November 19, 1999, Tech welcomed Indiana and head coach Bob Knight to Lubbock to open the United Spirit Arena. In front of a huge crowd, which included a student section that featured thousands of hunting targets being worn as accessories and used as signs to goad Knight for a recent hunting accident in which he shot a friend, the Red Raiders began the new era of the program with a 68-60 loss to one of the marquee programs in the sport.
In front of a national television audience, Tech forward Andy Ellis put up 30 points and grabbed 11 rebounds. But the Red Raiders shot just 26.3% shooting after beginning the second half down just 35-35.
Indiana’s A.J. Guyton led the Hoosiers with 22 points as the visitors built a double-digit second-half lead that they were able to protect for the majority of the second 20 minutes. At one point, Indiana held a 15 point lead midway through the half but the Red Raiders were able to cut the deficit to 65-60 with just under a minute to go.
However, IU was solid at the line to close out the game and the U.S.A. opened with a loss. Of course, two years later, Knight would return to Lubbock to take over the Red Raider program and he brought with him a journeyman assistant named Chris Beard. The rest is college basketball history.
That was the only time in the last two decades that Tech opened the season with a major conference opponent. Of course, that’s not going to change this year but the opponent could be the Cavazos Jr. High developmental squad tonight and the arena would still be packed.
That’s where this program finds itself. Gone are the days of having to plead the students to show up before conference play or selling seats to November and December games for next to nothing just to put 5,000 people in the arena.
In just three years, Beard has done what not even Knight could do. He’s turned Lubbock, Texas into one of the hotbeds of college basketball fandom.
It is a testament to the success he’s had but also to the way the community as fallen in love with his self-deprecating, common-man persona. He’s not a legendary icon like Mike Krzyzewski at Duke or Roy Williams at North Carolina nor is he a hotshot in a $10,000 suit and wearing enough grease in his hair that he could easily pass for an extra in a Goodfellas sequel as so many big-time coaches in this sport like to portray themselves as.
Rather, Beard is exactly what West Texas would want in a basketball coach. A grinder who has had to work his way through the wastelands of the semi-professional and Division II and III levels before becoming a star, he’s still hanging on to his Texas roots and the humility that pushes him to act in a manner that suggests he remains hungry even though he’s now one of the five highest-paid head coaches in the nation.
Beard is a coach who is easy to root for. In fact, he’s almost impossible to root against (unless you happen to have a degree from another Big 12 school hanging on your office wall).
That’s why the U.S.A. will be packed tonight for a game against a school that no one in Lubbock has ever head of. It isn’t just because we have a deep craving for Texas Tech basketball, it is because our lives are better when Chirs Beard is in it and it’s been too long since we’ve had our fix.
So as we begin the most anticipated season in program history, let’s take a look at what to expect from the latest version of the Red Raiders and ask ourselves whether we believe they can keep the magic alive in Lubbock.