Taking a look at the all-time Texas Tech basketball team comprised of players from the James Dickey era.
It’s fair to feel conflicted about the James Dickey era of Texas Tech basketball. On one hand, he was responsible for the program’s greatest NCAA Tournament run prior to the arrival of Bob Knight, 1996’s Sweet 16 appearance, but on the other hand, the second half of his time in Lubbock was marred by sanctions and a rapid descent to the bottom of the Big 12.
Head coach from 1991-92 until 2000-01, in each of his first six years he posted a winning record while taking the Red Raiders to the NCAA Tournament in 1993 and 1996. Over that time, he had a cumulative record of 119-58 while guiding Texas Tech to the 1993 Southwest Conference Tournament title, the 1995 SWC regular-season title, and the 1996 SWC regular-season and tournament crowns.
But over the last four years of his tenure, the bottom fell out of his program rather quickly. As most of the stars from the 1996 team that went 30-2 left the program and most of the Texas Tech athletic department was rocked by penalties related to a laundry list of NCAA Violations, many of the programs on campus, including Dickey’s basketball program, were slapped with a reduction of scholarships and restrictions on the number of coaches that could actively recruit.
The result was that from 1997-98 until the end of his time with the Red Raiders, Dickey’s teams went just 47-66 and never won more than 13 games in a season. That included a dreadful 9-19 season in his final year.
Arriving at Tech in fall of 1999, I was privy only to the final two years of the James Dickey era. Perhaps that’s why my memories of his time in Lubbock are a bit more jaded than other people’s might be. By the time I started paying attention, he had lost the program and the mood around town was pervasively negative.
Having just missed the glory of his first six years, I only saw the version of Dickey’s program that was in shambles, a mess that he and his coaching staff created by being complicit in the worst recruiting scandal to ever hit Texas Tech athletics.
Make no mistake, it wasn’t just a basketball program issue. Rather, almost every program on campus, including Spike Dykes’ football program and the beloved Lady Raider Basketball program, was guilty of wrongdoing as a culture of cheating and ignoring the rules swept across the entire athletic department.
Still, Dickey should bear some responsibility for his program’s part in the debacle and ultimately, those violations cost him his job less than a half a decade after he was the toast of the South Plains. But while we can’t tell the story of James Dicky and Texas Tech without acknowledging the ugly way it ended, we also have to give him credit for his successes because when his program was at its best, he fielded teams that would still be able to compete for titles in today’s Big 12.
So regardless of whether you are more apt to view Dickey, who’s 162 career wins rank third in program history, as a legendary Red Raider coach or a cautionary tale of how violating the rules can bring down one of the fastest rising stars in the coaching industry, there’s no denying that the players he brought to town were among the best we’ve ever seen. So let’s take a look at the all-time James Dickey era Texas Tech basketball team.