Texas Tech basketball: Trying to make sense of the Red Raiders’ woes
The transfer portal has been a huge miss this year
In today’s world of college athletics, what a team accomplishes in the transfer portal is just as important as any other aspect of building a team. Unfortunately, the big swings that Adams and Co. took in the portal have proven to be huge misses.
While Aimaq’s injury makes it a bit unfair to put him in the miss category, there’s no sugar-coating the fact that Kerwin Walton and D’Maurian Williams have been tremendous busts. That’s a reality that is really crushing this year’s team.
The plan was for those two veteran transfers to be vital cogs for the Red Raiders this season. Both had reputations for being knock-down shooters from 3-point range with Walton having shot 42% from deep as a true freshman in 2020-21 and Williams having shot 39.3% from deep last season.
The hope was that, with a fresh start, Walton would regain his freshman form and come close to averaging somewhere near the 8.2 points per game that he scored for North Carolina two seasons ago. Also, the Red Raiders believed that Williams, who put up 14.5 points per game last season at Gardner-Webb, would be able to give Tech some reliable offensive production as well.
That hasn’t happened. Not even close. Between them, that duo is averaging 7.6 points per game. Even worse, they have combined for a total of just eight points in three Big 12 games.
Taking it a step further, transfer Jaylon Tyson is also struggling. Not technically an offseason addition as he joined the program as a redshirt transfer from Texas last January, he is also part of the 2022 transfer class and he’s not proving capable of lifting the Red Raiders to victory as he’s putting up a mere 7.3 points per game in conference play.
That trio was desperately needed on Saturday with Batcho, Isaacs, and Allen all sidelined. That could have been their moment to step up and rescue the team from a disastrous start.
Instead, they combined to go 2-10 from the floor with only nine points between them. Walton didn’t even manage to get a shot off in eleven minutes of action, Tyson was 1-8 from the floor, including 0-5 from the 3-point line, and Williams missed two critical free throws in overtime to help seal Tech’s fate. Additionally, Tyson also turned the ball over five times.
These three transfers were being counted on to be important pieces of the roster this year. Instead, Walton and Williams have been nothing but passengers and Tyson is not proving to be a player who should be starting on a Big 12 team.
In recent years, Tech has been spoiled by the success of transfers such as Matt Mooney, Tariq Owens, Mac McClung, Bryson Williams, Daniel Batcho, and Kevin Obanor. However, not every transfer portal addition is going to work out and this year, Adams seems to have missed on his portal additions as none are helping this team win.