Texas Tech basketball: Might Red Raiders turn to WVU transfer to fill big need?

With the May 11 deadline for players wishing to enter the transfer portal and still be eligible to play next season quickly approaching, there is no doubt that business is going to pick up in the world of college hoops recruiting.  Of course, the Texas Tech basketball team still has plenty of shopping to do in that market and it is being reported that Grant McCasland might be looking at a West Virginia transfer to fill a gaping hole in his current roster.

With the departures of big men Daniel Batcho and Fardaws Aimaq, there is currently no size on the Tech roster with 6-foot-7 Robert Jennings being this team’s only post presence in the mix for next season.  Of course, that will change, and one player who might bring some height and bulk to West Texas may be familiar to Red Raider fans.

Last week, former West Virginia forward Jimmy Bell Jr. announced his intention to leave Morgantown after just one season with Bob Huggins’ program.  Now, it is being reported by the Twitter account 24/7HighSchoolHoops that Texas Tech is among a growing list of schools to have reached out to the 6-foot-10, 270-pound super senior.

Might Bell be a good fit for this retooled Red Raider roster?  Given that we don’t have a huge amount of insight as to what McCasland is looking for now that he’s building a Big 12 program for the first time, it is hard to say.

On the surface, Bell’s statistics don’t seem all that impressive.  Last season, he managed 4.8 points and 5.2 rebounds per game while appearing in 34 contests.   Shooting just under 55% from the floor, he did virtually all of his work under the basket.  What’s more, his 61.4% at the free-throw line indicates a lack of touch on his shot.

Those numbers track with what he’s managed to put up throughout his college career.  In two seasons with St. Louis to begin his career, he never topped 4.0 p.pg. and he topped out at 3.1 rebounds per game as a sophomore.

He then dropped down to the JUCO level to play at Moberly Area Community College in Missouri for a season before landing at West Virginia for the 2022-23 campaign.  For WVU, he mustered only five games of double-digit scoring including just one such instance in Big 12 play (a 15-point effort against TCU in a victorious effort in Morgantown).

Bell is a true stay-at-home big man.  He isn’t the type that Tech fans have come to know over the past several seasons in that he isn’t going to be a player who is successful when asked to switch when screened and check wings and guards.  He’s the anthesis of former Red Raider standout post players such as Tariq Owens and Bryson Williams when it comes to how he plays the game.  He’s even different than Aimaq in that, unlike the former Red Raider who committed to Cal in April, he doesn’t bring any offensive versatility in the way of an outside shot.

However, we may have to abandon the idea of looking exclusively for versatile bigs now that McCasland is in charge.  While his most recent North Texas squad was built in a similar way to the Chris Beard and Mark Adams Red Raider rosters of recent memory with athletic and mobile forwards roaming all over the court, he may feel that he can find a way to use a player of Bell’s strength and bulk.

The reality is that Tech is woefully undersized at the moment.  While McCasland has added some talented young transfer guards and secured the return of sophomore guard Pop Isaacs, there remains a massive hole in the paint for this program and Bell has the size that teams in the Big 12 need.  Whether or not he is a fit for McCasland and whether or not he has an interest in playing for the Red Raiders next year are two things that remain to be seen as we continue to closely monitor how the new Texas Tech basketball head coach puts together his first squad.