Former Texas Tech guard Pop Isaacs finds a new home in the transfer portal

Former Texas Tech guard Pop Isaacs has been searching for a new place to play for weeks. Saturday, he told Joe Tipton of On3Sports that he will continue his career at Creighton.

Last season, Isaacs led the Red Raiders in scoring at 15.8 points per game. He also handed out 3.5 assists and pulled down 3.2 rebounds per contest while making the start in all 34 of Texas Tech's games.

Isaacs was a wild ride on the court as a sophomore in 2023-24. At times he was spectacular as he was in Texas Tech's home win against BYU when he had 32 points and five rebounds as he almost single-handedly led his team back from a double-digit halftime deficit.

That was one of nine 20-point games he had this year. Those performances were proof that when Isaacs is at his best, he's hard to stop.

The problem is that he was often not at his best. Frequently, he was a wildly inefficient player who required far too many shots to get his points.

In 19 games, this past season, he shot 33.3% or worse from the field. In all but three of those games, he attempted double-digit field goals.

Some of that was because he was who Tech often turned to when all else failed during a possession. As one of the only players on the roster capable of creating something off the dribble or hitting deep 3-pointers, he took quite a few shots that no one else on the team would have to beat the shot clock.

However, at other times, Isaacs was too liberal with his shooting. He was never shy about taking shots from several feet beyond the arc, even when he was struggling to hit them. That drove many fans mad at times such as the five-game stretch in February when he scored below 10 points in four games and shot 21.4% during that stretch. Over the course of that slump, he still averaged 11.2 field goal attempts per game while making only 2.4 per game.

Of course, some may say that the only way out of a slump is to shoot one's way out of it. However, there were too many times when Isaacs shot his team into bad situations.

What's more, his shooting was worse in 2023-24 than it was during his true freshman campaign. This past season, he shot 29.3% from 3-point range after being a 37.8% 3-point shooter in his first season as a Red Raider.

Now, in fairness, we must remember that Isaacs played this entire season with a torn labrum in his hip, an injury that he has since surgery on in the offseason. What's more, he did play amid quite a circus of off-court issues, factors that also could have impacted his play.

Amid all of that, he did earn third-team All-Big 12 honors. He also gave his heart and soul to the Texas Tech basketball program. For that, he has to be commended.

Now he has found a new home in the Midwest and Texas Tech fans have to be happy that he won't call the Big 12 home next season. He was reportedly considering BYU as a landing spot but he's headed to Creighton where he will likely continue to put up plenty of points the way he did in Lubbock.