Texas Tech basketball: What we know about the Red Raiders so far

We are already a third of the way through the 2020-21 Texas Tech basketball season so let’s take a look at what we can say we know about this year’s team.

Through nine games, the Texas Tech basketball team is still finding its footing.  But that’s to be expected given how many new pieces are being worked into the mix.

Thus, a 7-2 overall record is acceptable at this juncture.  The problem is that those two losses came against the only two ranked teams Chris Beard’s squad has encountered thus far, no. 17 Houston and no. 5 Kansas.

Therefore, Tech still has a ways to go in order to prove that it is the type of team that we all believe it can eventually be.  The good news for Red Raider fans is that Beard has shown an ability to improve his team over the course of a season.

For instance, the 2018-19 team that reached the National Championship Game, started Big 12 play just 4-3 overall.  However, in the course of the final 19 games of the season, that team would manage to go 16-3.

We saw a similar progression from the 2017-18 Red Raiders. That team also got off to a 4-3 Big 12 start before rattling off seven-straight wins.  Of course, you may remember that the main reason that year’s team would drop five of its final seven games before the NCAA Tournament was because of a broken toe that Keenan Evans had to fight through.

Right now, the current version of the Red Raiders is at 1-1 in Big 12 play and that’s about where many expected them to be.  But they are just a play away from being 2-0 while also being just a play away from potentially being 0-2 (considering that Tech’ would have been without Terrence Shannon and Marcus Santos-Silva in OT, the Sooners likely would have taken down the Red Raiders on Tuesday had that game required an extra five minutes).

The point is that there is plenty left for Red Raider fans to learn about this team and for this team to learn about itself.  But a third of the season is more than enough time for us to make some evaluations about what Beard has on his hands.  So let’s look at what we can say with relative confidence that we know about this year’s team.