Catching Up
I pretty well ignored everything leading up to the basketball games this weekend. That plus my kids’ track meets and everything else, and I feel like everything else is just not as important and I sort of like giving Texas Tech basketball their flowers. Football starts back up this week so we’ll have that, but my primary focus will be on Texas Tech basketball.
NIL
I didn’t cover this at all, but this was the sit-down that Robert Giovannetti had with Kirby Hocutt and Cody Campbell regarding where this sit from a fundraising standpoint from Wednesday of last week. Given that Texas Tech basketball was playing on Thursday, I was more focused on that. Basically, Texas Tech is fully committed to participating in Power Four athletics and that Campbell definitely sees athletics as being a gateway to more students and a better university.
On the Diamond
Both Softball and baseball went 1-2 on the weekend. Softball played South Carolina in non-conference play and salvaged a game on Sunday, while baseball won on Saturday, but dropped in extra innings on Sunday. Softball faces Kansas in Lawrence this weekend and baseball has a mid-week game against Tarleton State while the weekend game is at Kansas State.
On the Court
Lady Raider basketball defeated No. 1 seed Virginia Tech, 69-59 to advance to the WBIT Tournament. The Lady Raiders will face the No. 3 seed Florida on Thursday in the quarterfinals in Gainesville at 6:00 p.m.
Texas Tech and Arkansas will play on Thursday at 9:09 p.m. and the game will be on TBS/truTV. We didn’t have that information yesterday. The other two teams still alive in Texas Tech’s West Region are Florida and Maryland.
ESPN’s Myron Medcalf ranks the remaining 16 teams in the Sweet 16:
9. Texas Tech Red Raiders
Original seed: No. 3 seed (West)
NCAA tournament results: Defeated No. 14 UNC Wilmington 82-72 (first round); defeated No. 11 Drake 77-64 (round of 32)
Consider one of college basketball’s most incredible storylines: JT Toppin. He didn’t play basketball until middle school, and he didn’t make his varsity team until his junior year of high school, according to the Times Record News (Wichita Falls, Texas). He wasn’t inundated with Division I scholarship offers but eventually found himself at New Mexico for the 2023-24 season. There, he blossomed and won Mountain West Freshman of the Year before transferring to Texas Tech. This season, he averaged 17.9 PPG, 9.3 RPG and 1.3 BPG on the way to securing AP All-America second-team honors and propelling the Red Raiders to the Sweet 16 for the fourth time since 2005 and the first time under second-year head coach Grant McCasland. Yes, this run has been anchored by Texas Tech’s top-10 defense. But Toppin is the best player on the floor — and still will be when facing a Razorbacks squad with multiple NBA prospects and five-star recruits in San Francisco.
CBS Sports’ Cameron Salerno scouts the remaining Sweet 16 teams and you can go check out what he wrote about Texas Tech, but here’s the bit about Arkansas.
Scouting the Razorbacks — Arkansas became the second team in the last 20 years (joining Texas A&M’s 2017-18 team) to reach the Sweet 16 after starting conference play 0-5. The Razorbacks had an up-and-down season in coach John Calipari’s first year with the program, but everything seems to be clicking at the right time to make this run possible. Arkansas is one of the best shot-blocking teams in the country and has tremendous length and size in the frontcourt. The Razorbacks finished fourth in the country (behind UConn, Auburn and Bryant) by averaging 5.6 blocks per game. This Arkansas roster is transfer and freshmen heavy, with most of the players in the rotation being either former Kentucky players or Kentucky recruits before they flipped their commitment to follow Calipari from Lexington to Arkansas.