Texas Tech basketball: Red Raiders have made most of MTEs

As the Texas Tech basketball program has soared to new heights, the Red Raiders have used their multi-team events as springboards for successful seasons.

Nowadays, virtually every college basketball team in the nation plays in what has become known as a multi-team event or MTE.  These non-conference, neutral-site games are great ways for coaches to test their teams in NCAA Tournament style situations.  And in each of the last two seasons, the Texas Tech basketball team has used their experience in their MTE as a springboard for tremendous success.

Now, we are set for this year’s event as Tech heads to the Las Vegas Invitational where Chris Beard’s team will face Iowa on Thursday and either San Diego State or Creighton on Friday.  This will be a pair of high-interest games for Red Raider fans as it will be the first true test of the season and the start of a key five-game stretch that will define the non-conference portion of the schedule.

Here’s hoping that Beard’s recent success in these events carries over to 2019.  That’s because the Red Raiders have not only won their last two MTEs, they’ve done so in dominating fashion.

In last year’s Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City, the Red Raiders fell behind both USC and Nebraska early before storming past both teams to take home the title.  In the 78-63 win over the Trojans, Tech was down nine points at the break but asserted its dominance in a 55-31 second-half revival.

Against Nebraska the next night, the Red Raiders again fell behind early, this time by the score of 13-4 in just over four minutes of play.  But by halftime, the Red Raiders had claimed a 32-26 advantage and in the second half, they coasted to a 70-52 win.

In that event, we saw just how dominant the Red Raiders could be as a team.  It was also the first time that grad transfers, Tariq Owens and Matt Mooney, made their presence known in meaningful games.   Mooney averaged 16 points per game and 18 points against the Trojans so they started to find their roles on the team.

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A year earlier, the Red Raiders participated in the Hall of Fame Tip-Off Tournament in Connecticut.  And just like in Kansas City, the Red Raiders won both games by double-digits.

Opening the event with a hard-fought 75-64 win over Boston College, Tech secured its first eye-opening win of the season.  That day, Keenan Evans had 29 points and both Jarrett Culver and Zhaire Smith had 11 points as the Red Raiders kept the Eagles at bay.

But it was the second game of that MTE that was a sign of just how good that team was.  Facing the No. 20 Northwestern Wildcats, a team coming off an NCAA Tournament birth, the Red Raiders put forth one of their best performances of the Beard era in an 85-49 domination.

What made this game unusual was the fact that the Red Raiders held the lead for the entire 40 minutes of play.  That’s because before the game even began, the Red Raiders were awarded a free throw when Northwestern was assessed a technical foul for turning in their starting lineup card late.

Evans was the man who hit that free throw as the start of a 25-point day for the tournament MVP.  That two-game stretch in which Evans averaged 27 points was the first time we began to see that he was a potential All-American caliber of player.

Coming off a year when the program missed out on the NCAA Tournament and did not win a Big 12 road game in Chris Beard’s first season, this MTE win proved to be a significant statement.  Beating the Eagles and Wildcats, Tech showed that it had the makings of a very good team, though we still did not think that the season would ultimately extend all the way to the Elite Eight.

The only time Beard has failed to win an MTE at Tech was in 2016 when he lost to Auburn 67-65 and beat Utah State 75-51 in the Cancun Challenge in Cancun, Mexico.  Including that win over the Aggies, Beard has rattled off five-straight wins in MTEs.

Now he takes his team to Vegas with as many questions to answer as we’ve ever seen.  That’s what comes with a team featuring eight freshmen and ten newcomers.

How the Red Raiders play in this neutral-site event where the crowd will likely be against them given the angst many in Vegas still hold towards Beard, who held the head coach job at UNLV for only two weeks before accepting the same job at Tech, will be telling.  In a city full of distractions and against two teams that will be the best opposition this team has seen all year, will this rebuilt roster, especially the youngsters, rise to the challenge or will previously unseen warts emerge?

Either way, these two games are going to be tremendous opportunities for Beard to lean about this year’s team.  Hopefully what he learns is that this is another squad capable of making tons of noise in March.