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Texas Tech basketball: Most highly-anticipated non-con games in U.S.A. history

By Matthew Conner

LUBBOCK, TX - JANUARY 01: Head Coach Bobby Knight of Texas Tech recieves a trophy from Big 12 associate commissioner John Underwood during ceremony after his team's win over New Mexico at United Spirit Arena January 1, 2007 in Lubbock, Texas. With the win Knight surpassed Dean Smith to become the all-time winniest college basketball with 880 victories. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
LUBBOCK, TX - JANUARY 01: Head Coach Bobby Knight of Texas Tech recieves a trophy from Big 12 associate commissioner John Underwood during ceremony after his team's win over New Mexico at United Spirit Arena January 1, 2007 in Lubbock, Texas. With the win Knight surpassed Dean Smith to become the all-time winniest college basketball with 880 victories. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images) /
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The Texas Tech Red Raiders fans storm the court  (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images)
The Texas Tech Red Raiders fans storm the court  (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images) /

Ahead of this weekend’s showdown with Kentucky in Lubbock, let’s look at the best non-conference Texas Tech basketball games we’ve ever seen at the United Supermarkets Arena.

We’ve likely never seen anything the likes of what we are in store for Saturday at the United Supermarkets Arena.  That’s because the most anticipated regular-season game in this history of Texas Tech basketball is set to go down when Kentucky comes calling as part of the Big 12/SEC Challenge.

This is the 20th season of basketball at United Supermarkets Arena and it still holds up as one of the finest college basketball venues in the nation.  And under Chris Beard, it has become one of the most daunting places for visiting times to play.

Tech is 59-7 in Lubbock during Beard’s tenure.  What’s more. in the last two seasons, Tech has lost only one home game per year.

Of course, to repeat that accomplishment for a third-straight year will be challenging given that Tech has already dropped a home game to Baylor.  That 57-52 defeat remains one of the more frustrating nights of the Chris Beard era as Tech was just 5-12 at the free-throw line.

In the Big 12/ SEC Challenge, the Red Raiders are 3-0 in Lubbock.  That includes a victory over Arkansas last year as well as wins against Auburn in 2014 and LSU in 2017.

What makes this weekend so unusual though is that the biggest sports event of the year in Lubbock will unquestionably be a Red Raider basketball game.  That’s not something we’ve said with much regularity.

Of course, basketball has been the hottest game in town for the last three seasons.  When combined with the fact that the football program continues to languish at the bottom of the conference standings, the rise of Red Raider hoops under Beard has been meteoric.

But in most years, the football team has had at least one marquee game that could contend for the title of the biggest game of the year in Lubbock.  That wasn’t the case this year.

The only ranked team to come to Lubbock this fall was No. 21 Oklahoma State.  The other Big 12 teams that played at Jones Stadium, TCU, Iowa State, and Kansas State, were all unranked at the time they visited and they elicited very little interest from the fan base.

Now, fans are camping out for a Red Raider basketball game.  And you have to believe that if this game were being played at Jones Stadium, the crowd would dwarf what we saw for the last three home games of 2019 when there were nearly as many empty seats as there were fans in the stands.

So let’s look back at the biggest non-conference home games in Tech history.  As we do, we will find that none quite measure up to the hype of Saturday’s showdown with the Wildcats.

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