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Texas Tech basketball: Observations about Red Raiders’ 2023-24 Big 12 schedule

By Matthew Conner

Mar 4, 2023; Lubbock, Texas, USA; A general overview of the team introductions before the game between the Oklahoma State Cowboys and the Texas Tech Red Raiders at United Supermarkets Arena. Mandatory Credit: Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 4, 2023; Lubbock, Texas, USA; A general overview of the team introductions before the game between the Oklahoma State Cowboys and the Texas Tech Red Raiders at United Supermarkets Arena. Mandatory Credit: Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports /
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Texas Tech men’s basketball coach Grant McCasland attends the Air Raiders game against the Purple Hearts during the first round of The Basketball Tournament Lubbock Regional, Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at United Supermarkets Arena.
Texas Tech men’s basketball coach Grant McCasland attends the Air Raiders game against the Purple Hearts during the first round of The Basketball Tournament Lubbock Regional, Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at United Supermarkets Arena. /

Tuesday, the Texas Tech basketball team released its Big 12 schedule to finally complete the slate of games for the upcoming season.  Certainly, this will be a fascinating year for the program and the conference.

First of all, the Big 12 is welcoming four new members, BYU, Cincy, Houston, and Central Florida.  That puts an end to the conference’s round-robin home-and-home format that saw every team face the nine other conference teams at home and on the road, a practice that was in place since the conference shrank to 10 schools in 2012.

To try to keep up some semblance of regional rivalries now that there are 14 teams in the league, the conference decided to have each team play five conference opponents home and away with those matchups being heavily influenced by geographical considerations.  To get to 18 conference games (the number that the league has played since 2012) teams will play the rest of their conference rivals just once.

Now, this format is going to have to be adjusted again in 2024-25 given that the conference will grow to 16 teams for the next academic year.  How the Big 12 finds a way to create a fair and balanced schedule in that scenario will be a challenge.

https://twitter.com/TexasTechMBB/status/1706678000278741047?s=20

Will the league go to a pod system with four groups of four teams that all play home-and-home?  That seems to be the most likely option.  But then, how will the rest of the conference games be decided?  That’s something that Commissioner Brett Yormark and his advisors must figure out soon.  Therefore, the next Big 12 schedule that comes out will be one of the most intriguing we’ve seen perhaps in the history of the league.

Of course, Texas Tech’s season will also be captivating this year given that for the second time since 2021, the Red Raiders will be under the leadership of a new head coach.  For sure, the Grant McCasland experiment will be watched closely by fans in Raiderland who have come to love Texas Tech hoops over the past decade and who hope that the program’s upward trajectory can continue despite now being completely free of any ties to the Chris Beard/Mark Adams duo that guided the Red Raiders to never-before-seen heights since 2016-17.

McCasland has won at every stop along his head coaching journey.  He has a career winning percentage of .744.  What’s more, at the Division-I level, he’s won over 60% of his games.

However, the challenge before him is immense.  He’s now going to join the fray in the toughest and deepest conference in the nation, one that is only going to grow even more rugged with the addition of Houston this year and Arizona next season.

So let’s take a look at some observations from the initial Big 12 schedule that McCasland will have to navigate.  We will start by looking at how the end of a heated rivalry will come about.

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