With Big 12 basketball set to begin for Texas Tech on Tuesday, the Red Raiders will need all hands on deck. Fortunately, it appears that the team will enter the upcoming 20-game conference slog at full strength.
Sunday, head coach Grant McCasland met with the media and gave an update on the health status of both of his recently-injured big men, JT Toppin and Federiko Federiko. Thankfully, the news he provided was positive.
"Our anticipation is that everybody is going to be able to play outside of Jazz Henderson," McCasland said. "We've had everybody in practice and at this point, we would anticipate getting everybody back."
While Henderson, a freshman from Dallas, Texas, has not played this year due to an offseason injury, the real news here is obviously the return of Toppin and Federiko.
Toppin, a sophomore transfer from New Mexico leads the Red Raiders in scoring (18.6 points per game) and rebounding (11.0 per game). In his first year with the Red Raiders, the Dallas native has been even better than advertised when he arrived fresh off a freshman campaign that saw him earn Mountain West Freshman of the Year honors last season.
Unfortunately, though, a minor knee injury sustained in practice has caused him to miss the last four games. In that stretch, Tech went 3-1 but did drop an important neutral-site game to Texas A&M, one that most Red Raiders feel would have ended differently had Toppin been on the court.
Meanwhile, Federkio has been dealing with a shoulder injury that has required him to wear a brace in recent games. That injury caused him to miss Tech's most recent game on December 21 against Lamar.
To see the 6-foot-11 native of Finland sit out that game was disappointing given that just days prior, he had posted a career-high of 23 points to go along with 12 rebounds and five assists in a win over Oral Roberts in what was arguably his best game as a collegiate.
Tech has not had its full rotation available for most of this season. In fact, because 6-foot-8 sophomore Eemeli Yalaho didn't make his season debut until November 29 against Northern Colorado, it means that Tech has had its full rotation of players for just one game this year.
Now, the Red Raiders appear to be back to full helath when it comes to the players that the program intended to heavily lean on this season. (Henderson was never exepcted to play any type of major role in 2024-25.)
That's great news on the eve of Big 12 play. Though the Big 12 does not appear to be as dominant now as many thought it might be when the season began, the conference schedule will still push the Red Raiders to their limits and having a full trio of healthy post options in Toppin, Federiko, and Yalaho will be imperative if McCasland's team hopes to make noise during league play.