Grant McCasland talks about roster, conference schedule, more in media session

On Tuesday, Texas Tech basketball head coach Grant McCasland met with the media. Covering a wide array of topics, he gave an update on several aspects of his program and where the Red Raiders are as the spring draws to a close.

"What a wild spring it's been since the season ended to now," McCasland said. "We've really had our hands full but we've also had a great opportunity to secure our roster and the guys that return and then add some great pieces to our team and couldn't be more thrilled about the direction. We've had some staff changes and I just I'm really excited about our team and our program and where we're going. You know, at Texas Tech the standard is to compete for championships and specifically how do we put ourselves in the best position to win a national championship?

"And the things that we're going to do on a daily basis aren't changing and having the right people is the most important component and I think we've done that this spring headed into the summer. I’m really excited to get everybody on campus and get to work."

McCasland said that when putting together his new roster, he relied heavily upon his returning players. In fact, it sounds as if the players helped the coaching staff determine who to bring on board.

"Trying to build a team you have to look at your current guys and just make sure that not everything fits exactly the same, just who matches and who helps the current roster and that's really what we built it around," he said.

"But as we started recruiting new team members I just love the conviction...," he said, "we had guys coming to us like when we had people come visit like 'hey we don't think this guy's a great fit for our team.' And anytime you have that kind of buy-in...I thought our best recruiters were honestly our players."

The Red Raiders still have a handful of open scholarships and McCasland was asked if he would use all of them or hold one back. He said it depends on finding the right players.

"Our intention with the remaining roster spots is to fill them at this point," he said, "and I think as we get closer to the end of the summer and we don't feel like there's a great fit we're not going to rush. There's going to be nothing that we do that's going to be 'Hey just because we have a scholarship let's add somebody'. It will be met with a lot of data and doing character references and making sure that they're a good fit for our program moving forward."

As for the type of player he's looking for, McCasland has some parameters that he wants to fill. Specifically, he wants to add size.

"We've experienced the Big 12," he said, "and you know you got to have size so I think if we're going to add any depth that's really going to be at the size and to have another versatile point guard which we hope is soon.

"And then moving forward I think we just need to add size and depth at those positions. And then if we could find a best available late in the summer that we feel like to just help us win, we would definitely do something with that but not necessarily feeling like we have to do anything. Right now we love our team."

McCasland will spend part of this summer working with the Team USA under-18 squad as an assistant. He talked about that opportunity and what it could mean.

"Yeah, I mean you know what a remarkable opportunity," he said. "Really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity...there's nothing like representing your country and so first and foremost it's just an honor to be able to do that and hopefully I'll get to serve these guys and then there are some benefits obviously you get to be around the top 30 at this point players in the country in this age."

As for the Big 12, McCasland was asked about the challenge of moving to a 20-game conference schedule due to the league's expansion.

"You know we haven't seen a schedule," McCasland said. "I know there's a lot of anticipation of how they're going to...put together a 20-league schedule and how are they going to set up. There's a lot of discussion at the Big 12 meetings about you know just the Big Monday games plus travel plus you know short turnarounds from Saturday Monday.

"...it sounds great until you get your schedule and then you look and see that the unique parts that we'll have to navigate. But I mean at this point we've got such great teams in our league and every night I do think this is still the best league in college basketball and if you take care of your home games it gives you the best chance to put yourself in position to win the league and ultimately get a great seed and win the NCAA tournament."