Texas Tech basketball: 3 players who are seeing their stock rise
Terence Shannon Jr.
If we had a dollar for every time ESPN analyst Jay Bilas gushed over Red Raider freshman Terrence Shannon Jr. during Tuesday’s broadcast, we’d all be in line for a rather merry Christmas. During the game, ESPN’s top basketball blowhard repeatedly referred to Shannon as a future NBA player.
No player on this team is doing more for his stock than the Chicago native and his metamorphosis into a superstar in the making began in his hometown against DePaul. Taking over in the second half to almost single-handedly carry his team to OT in a hostile environment, the 6-foot-7 forward had a career-high 24 points, repeatedly driving to the rim thanks to an unstoppable first step and the ability to cover ten feet per stride. What’s more, he also drilled two deep three-pointers which seemed at the time that they went through the net that they were going to be game-winning daggers.
After coming up just two points shy of equaling the scoring of the rest of the Red Raider starting five against the Blue Demons, he was again a factor against Louisville. Though he did not dominate the way he did in the previous game, he had 13 points on 4-9 shooting, making him the team’s second-leading scorer.
Most important was his 5-6 shooting at the free-throw line, all of which came in the second half. Thus far, he’s been a surprising 83.3% shooter at the line giving Tech another fantastic late-game option to compliment Davide Moretti, the Big 12’s top free-throw shooter.
It isn’t that Shannon has come out of nowhere. After all, he was a 4-star recruit and a top-90 player in the nation who was only overshadowed in his signing class by Ramsey. In almost any other year, he would have been the bell cow of Tech’s haul.
Reminiscent of the rise of Zhaire Smith in 2017-18, Shannon is already rising from the ranks of relative unknown freshman to a player being mentioned as a sure-fire NBA prospect. The difference is that it’s only taken Shannon nine games to garner that attention. Now, it seems like the only question is whether it takes Shannon only one year to join Smith in the Association.