Perhaps the lone bright spot from Tuesday's 87-83 loss to Central Florida by the Texas Tech basketball team was the spectacular showing by sophomore forward JT Toppin. The transfer from New Mexico almost single-handedly carried the Red Raiders back from an 18-point deficit but in the end, his teammates were unable to rise and meet his level of play.
For the game, the 6-foot-9 forward led all scoerers with 26 points. What's more, he pulled down ten rebounds, blocked four shots, and even handed out a pair of assists.
That was despite the fact that he missed the four previous games due to injury. In fact, he had not appeared in a game since November 29 against Northern Colorado, the day after Thanksgiving.
It was a masterful performance as Toppin went 11-19 from the floor. And Tech needed every bit of productivity from its star given that the team's second and third-best players, Darrion Williams and Chance McMillian struggled. Between them, that duo scored only 23 points and shot a combined 9-27 from the floor.
This wasn't the first time that the Red Raiders lost when getting a big performance from Toppin, unfortunately. Back in November, the team followed almost the same script in a one-point loss to Saint Joseph's as Tech fell into a large deficit early and couldn't complete a second-half comeback.
In the 78-77 defeat in Brooklyn, New York on November 21, the Red Raiders saw Toppin pour in 22 points and grab a whopping 18 rebounds but yet, they couldn't capitalize on that monster effort.
That night, Williams had 18 points and McMillian had 17 so that loss doesn't fall on their shoulders. However, Tech got only eight points from its bench that day. More importantly, the Red Raiders were terrible on defense (just like they were against UCF on Tuesday) allowing Saint Joseph's to shoot 12-22 (54.5%) from 3-point range.
In fact, Toppin has played in only three games against power-conference opponents this year and Tech is 1-2 in those contests with the only win coming over a sub-par Syracuse squad that is currently 6-7 on the season.
Toppin has done his part though. He's averaged 21 points, 11.3 rebounds, and three blocks per contest in those three games.
In fact, he's on pace for one of the best seasons we've ever seen from a Red Raider. Currently averaging 19.5 points, 10.9 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks per game, he's scoring a point more per game than Jarrett Culver did when he won Big 12 Player of the Year honors in 2019 while grabbing almost twice as many rebounds and blocking only 0.5 fewer shots per game than Culver's teammate Tariq Owens did that same season, the year that Tech went to the National Championship Game in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The question is whether or not Toppins heroics will be for nothing. Though there are still 19 games left in the regular season, if the NCAA Tournament were to start today, Tech would likely be on the wrong side of the bubble.
It would be a crying shame if this team were to get a historic season from Toppin and waste it by not playing good enough perimeter defense for it to matter come March. Such a scenario would be reminiscent of the Patrick Mahomes era of Texas Tech football when the Red Raiders went just 12-13 overall and made it to only one bowl game in the two full seasons that Mahomes was the starting quarterback in Lubbock. It was because of awful defense that Mahomes' teams at Tech didn't win more games and that same fate could befall Toppin's basketball team this season.
Like Mahomes, Toppin's future lies at the next level of his sport. Though he has a flaw in his game in that he's not a knockdown 3-point shooter, he has the skills and athleticism to have a career in the NBA.
The only question is when that NBA career will begin. It could happen as soon as this summer, especially if Toppin continues to post monster numbers in the Big 12.
Therefore, the rest of the Red Raiders had better capitalize on the standout play of their teammate and start raising the level of their own play. If they don't, everyone in scarlet and black could look back on this season with regret over the fact that the program wasted such a special talent.