Texas Tech head coach Chris Beard announced that sophomore forward Joel Ntambwe would no longer be a part of the program as Ntambwe had personal and family reasons for his departure:

We appreciate Joel’s contributions to our basketball program. We wish Joel the best in his future. I’ll personally be pulling for him to succeed in his next step.

Ntambwe had played in all three games thus far, but only played a handful of minutes against Houston.

Of course, this pretty much moves up anyone with any size to speak of up the depth chart, including Terrence Shannon, Kevin McCullar, Chiduzo Agbo, Tyreek Smith, and maybe Vlad Goldin.

ESPN announcer Fran Fraschilla and Chris Beard are friends and Fraschilla tweeted the following upon hearing the news:

Not surprised. Shannon will step up more, Peavy about to take off, the very important Kevin McCullar back soon from ankle injury & more minutes for major sleeper (not in SoCal) Chibuzo Agbo.

I’m not smart enough to figure out what Fraschilla means by all of this, that he’s not surprised and there was a follow up couple of tweets where Fran also tweeted the following when someone mentioned that Texas Tech just hasn’t gotten going thus far this year, especially offensively:

Sadly, did not see a high motor at any time last season. Not a good formula in Lubbock. McCullar is critical.

Again, I’m not sure exactly what this all means and would guess that Fraschilla is just talking about Ntambwe and that perhaps Ntambwe was not a good fit in Lubbock?