Texas Tech basketball: Red Raider fans with plenty to be thankful for

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LUBBOCK, TX – FEBRUARY 23: Texas Tech Red Raider students (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images) /

Tech basketball has become a can’t miss event

Since it opened in 1999, the U.S.A. has been one of the nicest college basketball facilities in the nation. But for most of its existence, it has felt too cavernous as there have been thousands of empty seats, even for premier games. It was even to the point that the athletic department thought about reconfiguring the seating to decrease the capacity by around 2,000 fans.

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That’s no longer a thought because, on a nightly basis, fans are filling even the upper levels. That’s something some of us thought we would never see.

How thankful are we all that the fan support for this program is now matching the level of play that we’ve seen on the floor for two years? Finally, the crowds in Lubbock are representative of a top program regardless of the opponent. In other words, the draw is finally Texas Tech, not the other team.

That’s a huge place to get to as a program. It’s where Beard has been attempting to take Tech hoops from the moment he arrived and now, his relentless work in trying to connect with his fan base is paying off.

If you haven’t been to a Tech basketball game in the last two-plus seasons, you owe it to yourself to go. You won’t believe how different the atmosphere inside the U.S.A. is these days. At times, it is so loud that it is impossible to communicate with the person next to you.

The student section is one of the most engaged and rambunctious in the nation and though I’ve never seen the Cameron Crazies in person, I’d put the Raider Riot up against any student section. It still brings chills to my skin to see 4,000 students show up to see Tech take on Bethune-Cookman in mid-November.

We all must be thankful that we get to experience Tech hoops in one of the most electric atmospheres in the nation. Go to a game at Baylor, Texas, TCU, or Oklahoma and compare the environment to what we see in Lubbock. It’s laughable.

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We are fortunate to have one of the biggest and loudest arenas in the nation. Even more so, we are fortunate to have a fan base that is now hungry enough for Tech hoops to make our arena as tough of a place to play as any in the game. Thankfully, the days of an empty U.S.A. are well behind us, even on nights when we are playing Double-Direction State.

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