Texas Tech basketball: Terrence Shannon Jr. announces he won’t return to Red Raiders

One of the largest dominoes of the offseason has fallen.  Guard Terrence Shannon Jr. has announced that he will not return to the Texas Tech basketball program.  That’s a significant development for a number of reasons.

Obviously, Shannon’s productivity, especially on offense, will need to be replaced.  This past season, he was able to put up 10.4 points per game to go along with 2.6 rebounds and 2.0 assists.

But the good news is that Tech knows early on in this offseason that they will have Shannon’s scholarship to fill.  That will allow the coaching staff to aggressively pursue their top targets in the transfer portal.  And to be honest, replacing what Shannon gave the Red Raiders in 2021-22 won’t be as difficult as many might believe.

Granted, a nagging back injury kept him from being as reliable this season as in years past.  That and an early-season eligibility question meant that he would appear in only 26 of Tech’s 37 games, the fewest number of appearances he made as a Red Raider.

Perhaps it was that injury that caused his numbers to slide just a bit from the previous season.  In fact, his offensive rating (an estimate of the number of points produced per 100 possessions) was a career-worst 109.2, down from 114.8 in his sophomore season.  What’s more, his rebounding numbers fell from 5.9 per 40 minutes played a season ago to just 4.2 this season.

In all, Shannon scored in double figures just eleven times this year (the fewest in a season thus far in his career) and he topped 20 points just three times.  Also, he often came up silent against top competition.  Against Texas, he totaled just eight points in two games, including just two points in the unforgettable Red Raider victory in Lubbock.  Additionally, he had just three points against Norte Dame in the second round of the NCAA Tournament and a mere four points in Tech’s Big 12 Tournament win over Oklahoma.  Of course, all of those games wound up going Tech’s way.

But in half of Tech’s losses this year, he didn’t score in double digits.  That’s not what many envisioned for him as the program’s leading returning scorer.

Any way you look at it, Shannon’s junior campaign was far from what fans (and likely Shannon himself) expected.  He did not play his way into the NBA Draft’s first round nor did he manage to increase his standing among professional hopefuls.

Remember that last offseason, Shannon put his name in the NBA Draft and went through the evaluation process before returning to Tech.  At the time, it was believed that he was a mid-to-late second-round pick.  Thus, he gambled on himself and came back to school to try to improve his status as a potential draftee.  That gamble didn’t pay off and he’s left to try to improve his draft stock once again.

Now, he appears to be determined to do that in someplace other than Lubbock, Texas.  That means that Mark Adams will have to once again hit the transfer portal ever harder this offseason than he was already planning to.

But given how successful Adams was in that regard the last offseason, there’s reason to be optimistic about his ability to fill Shannon’s shoes.  And fortunately, Shannon did not leave Tech to twist in the wind for long.  Now we know he won’t be part of this program anymore and Adams and Co. can begin to set about the task of finding his replacement.