Texas Tech basketball: Matchups to watch as Red Raiders host Bears

McCullar vs. Butler

Let’s now flip the script and look at Tech’s best defensive player, Kevin McCullar, and his matchup with Baylor’s best offensive player Jared Butler.  Averaging 16.4 points per game, Butler is one of the premier scorers in the conference and he will likely be the focal point of Tech’s defensive attack.

Of course, Tech will throw a number of different defenders at him being as the defensive scheme calls for the Red Raiders to switch all screens.  But when it counts, expect Kevin McCullar to be the man charged with keeping Butler in check.

The Baylor point guard has been a problem in this league for three seasons now so he’s seen it all and that savvy makes him incredibly tough.  Of course, no Red Raider is savvier than McCullar, who is without question Tech’s top perimeter defender.

Though Butler isn’t an elite athlete, he’s an elite finisher at the rim.  He often scores when shooting from difficult angles and there’s a craftiness to his game that makes it hard to stop.  In that sense, he’s reminiscent of Michigan State point guard Cassius Winston, who Tech saw in the 2019 Final Four.

This season, the Louisiana native has also become a dead-eye 3-point shooter.  Hitting at a 43.1% rate, he’s improved his 3-point shot by 5% over last year.

At 6-foot-3, 195 pounds, Butler isn’t a big guard.  Thus, McCullar and even Kyler Edwards will have a size advantage over him.  Perhaps that will allow them to harass him enough that he can’t score at will as he so often has in his career.

He has faced Tech four times and has averaged 14.2 points per game.  That includes games of 19, 17, and 16 points.

The key today will be to make Butler a one-dimensional player.  Tech either has to decide to run him off the 3-point line and hope that the interior defense can help deny him from getting to the rim or try to sag off of him and entice him to be a jump shooter.  It will be interesting to see what tactic Beard deploys in this game but whatever way he goes, McCullar will likely be the spearhead of the attack.