Texas Tech basketball: Red Raiders show interest in transfer big man

New Texas Tech basketball head coach Mark Adams has proven that he can find guards to add to his roster. After all, in his first month at the helm of the program, he’s already added Davion Warren from Hampton, Adonis Arms from Winthrop, Chandler Jacobs from Dallas Baptist, and Ethan Duncan from Lubbock’s Trinity Christian High School.

But informed Red Raider fans know that this roster isn’t going to be complete or competitive until some serious size is added to the equation. Height was a missing element from each of the last two versions of Texas Tech basketball and it remains absent from the current squad that Adams is assembling as no player on the current team is taller than 6-foot-7.

One transfer big man for Red Raider fans to know is Thomas Binelli, a 6-foot-10 forward who played previously at Eastern Michigan. According to Jake Lieberman, Texas Tech has already been in contact with the 235-pound native of Italy who played his high school basketball in New Jersey. Also reportedly having reached out to Binelli are Kent State, Ball State, and Sam Houston State (not exactly a list of Final Four contenders).

It appears that he did not play this past season (presumably due to the pandemic but I couldn’t find out why for certain), but in 2019-20 Binelli put up solid numbers. He scored 8.6 points and pulled down 3.1 boards per game. While those numbers aren’t going to warrant any parades in his honor, they are strong enough to show that he can be a winning piece at the collegiate level.

This past season, Binelli had 10 double-digit performances. That included 26 points and 5 boards aginst Northern Illinois and 17 and 4 against Miami (OH).

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Now, it appears that the Texas Tech coaching staff is intrigued enough to kick the tires on this transfer. Still, he isn’t the type of big man that many Red Raider fans are longing for.

Unlike Tariq Owens, the 6-foot-10 center who set Tech’s school record for blocks in a season in 2018-19 (the player who fans in scarlet and black of this generation will always compare every big man) Binelli is not a freak athlete. Nor is he a rim-protector. He averaged just 0.8 blocks per game last season.

But he does possess a skill that is rather coveted in big men…he can hit from 3-point range. Though his 31.3% from deep in 2019-20 was not record-breaking, it was proof that Binelli has nice touch from beyond the arc. And given how many playmakers Tech plans on having on the roster next year, being able to stretch the floor with a big man would completely open up the offense by drawing the other team’s bigs away from the goal.

Don’t expect any immediate movement on Tech’s part in this recruiting battle. The interest here is likely not as great as it is in other big men who are more athletic and who better fit that Tariq Owens mold. And as of right now, no official offer from the Red Raiders has been reported.

But Binelli is a nice player who could be an acceptable fall-back option should the Red Raiders strike out on their top big-man targets. So file his name away in your memory banks just in case, because he could eventually come into play for the Red Raiders.

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