Texas Tech basketball: Early-season surprises from rebuilt Red Raiders
The Texas Tech basketball season is merely three games old but already, there have been a few surprises worth noting.
It’s been seven days since the Texas Tech basketball last took the floor in a blowout win over Houston Baptist in Midland. It’s been rather cruel for Chris Beard and his team to leave us to focus on the woes of the football program for an entire week after only three games of feeding our basketball addiction.
Thus far, it’s been tough to judge the Red Raiders because the level of competition they’ve faced has been barely a notch above playing in the New Mexico 4-A state tournament. Of course, we aren’t likely to learn all that much more this week despite two games being on the slate.
Thursday, the Red Raiders host a 3-1 Tennessee State team that is yet to play a major conference opponent. Interestingly, in the next two games, the Tigers will face Tech and a possible Red Raider opponent in the Las Vegas Invitational, San Diego State. The ESPN.com matchup predictor gives Tech a 98.4% chance of moving to 4-0 when it returns to the court.
On Sunday, the final tuneup before Tech heads to Vegas to take on Iowa on Thanksgiving night, the Red Raiders welcome the Sharks of Long Island University. At just 1-3 overall, it doesn’t appear that this will be the caliber of opponent that can challenge this rebuilt Tech squad either.
But regardless of the opponent, each game does provide us some data to consider, which is especially fascinating this year given that we’ve never seen the type of one-year rebuild that Beard is currently attempting. It has to be strange for any team, regardless of the program’s pedigree, to replace nine players from a roster that reached the National Title Game just six months prior.
With seven freshmen on the team, each night is a likely surprise. Fortunately, through three games, all surprises have been of the welcome variety.
Let’s go inside the Texas Tech basketball team’s early-season numbers to look at some of the areas where the Red Raiders are surprising. As we do, let’s ponder whether these trends are sustainable when the competition ramps up next week.