Texas Tech Basketball:Joel Ntambwe’s waiver denied, what that means for Red Raiders

Tech will be a guard-heavy team

To understand how thin in the post this team is, we only have to look back at Thursday night’s game against Tennessee State.  With starting forward T.J. Holyfield spending most of the game on the bench with foul trouble, Beard went to a five-guard lineup with 6-foot-6 grad transfer Chris Clarke and 6-foot-7 freshman Terrence Shannon as the team’s biggest players on the floor.

That’s an area where Ntambwe would have been a great option.  Last year, he spent tons of time playing in the paint as he assumed his team’s starting power forward role when the Rebels’ starting No. 4 went down with an injury.  And given his ability to handle the ball and guard the perimeter, he could have anchored a small-ball lineup by giving Beard some size in those situations.

But without Ntambwe in the mix, we are probably going to see quite a bit of four and five-guard lineups this year.  With Holyfield playing only 14 minutes against Tennessee State, we saw Clarke log 25 minutes off the bench and freshman Kevin McCullar Jr. play 18.

That was possible because the Tigers are a smaller, perimeter-oriented team.  But when the Red Raiders take on teams with bigger lineups, will the absence of Ntambwe be a problem if Holyfield is in foul trouble?  Also, we had better starting praying now that Holyfield, who missed all of last year with a shoulder injury, is able to remain injury-free for the entire season.

Of the eight players that saw at least ten minutes on Thursday, Holyfield was the only post player.  But Beard suggested after the game that his rotation is nowhere near being set.

"“We’re still a work in progress,” he said.  “I thought tonight, Tennessee State played a lot of small-ball. At times they didn’t have a lot of back-the-basket players. You got to make coaching decisions, and you hope those decisions will lead you to victory.”"

College basketball is moving towards being a guard’s game.  Even the top big men these days play a style that centers around handling the ball and shooting from outside.

Thus, Tech isn’t alone in having a guard-heavy lineup.  But there will be times this year when having another player of Ntambwe’s size and skill-set would have been beneficial.  At least everyone now knows that he won’t be an option this year and Beard and Co. can get to work on trying to figure out how to get the rest of their young roster ready for those moments.