Basketball

FOX Sports’ John Fanta takes a look at the Big 12, thinking that Baylor, Kansas, TCU, and Texas are your top 4 teams with Texas Tech checking in at #5:

Texas Tech is really the wild card of the conference. Given how well the Raiders have defended, not to mention the winning pedigree they have developed, it would not be surprising to see them rise into the top-15. But there are also some unknowns that could lead them more into being a top 30-35 squad.

Football

Rivals’ Nick Harris has an excellent article on Joey McGuire, director of player personnel James Blanchard, and the process of high school evaluation. I’ll quote two things here, but I do recommend you reading the whole thing. Here’s Blanchard on how recruiting normally works and how it works at Texas Tech:

“Our scouting department is different,” Blanchard said. “In other scouting departments, they’ll scout a kid, send him to the position coach, the position coach has to OK it to go to the coordinator and then he has to OK it for the head coach. Then the head coach decides if he wants to listen to all of those guys and offer the kid. With coach McGuire, he trusts all of us unequivocally. If we go to him and say this kid is an offer, he has the measurables, the length, he has this and that — he trusts us to offer the kid. That’s why you’ll see Texas Tech be the first to offer so many guys, it’s because our process is so much quicker. It’s scouting department-led.”

And here’s McGuire talking about how he wants kids playing multiple sports, not just football. I know of a handful of local programs (in the Kaufman County area) that are telling kids that they have to choose between football and basketball as freshmen. That’s absurd and doesn’t make any sense, but what do I know.

“We’re looking for guys that play basketball, that run track,” McGuire said as he addressed the coaches at the convention. “Get your kids playing multiple sports and get them doing everything they can so we can truly evaluate them athletically. Right now, we have a kid that I saw dunk ten times in a game. He’s at a really small school, too. We don’t care what level they’re playing at, we want to know how athletic they are.”

ESPN’s Harry Lyles, Jr. and Dave Wilson have an overview look at the Big 12. Not a ton of mentioning Texas Tech, but it is something to read (not exactly a ringing endorsement . . . it’s fine, just not Texas Tech centric).

CFN’s Pete Fiutak has 5 sleeper teams for 2022 and Texas Tech is included in that group:

New head coach Joey McGuire and defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter know what they’re doing. This year’s D will generate a lot more pressure, the secondary concerns are being worked on, and in the end, all this group needs to do is occasionally hold serve.

Western Kentucky had one of the nation’s most explosive offenses last year after having one of the biggest snoozer attacks for a few years. And why? It brought in offensive coordinator Zach Kittley along with most of the big passing game parts.

Now Kittley is in Lubbock, the Red Raiders are about to wing it all over the yard helped by a stunningly deep quarterback group to choose from, and for most teams, you need not plan on getting off the bus unless you’re prepared to score 40 points.