Texas Tech head coach Grant McCasland joined Seth Davis and Andy Katz on The Hoops HQ Show to talk about JT Toppin’s season-ending injury, NCAA Tournament seeding and more as March Madness approaches.
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Seth Davis: We are very pleased to be joined on The Hoops HQ Show by the head coach of the Texas Tech Red Raiders, Mr. Grant McCasland. We’re recording this on Wednesday afternoon. On Tuesday night, Texas Tech lost at home to TCU. Grant, why don’t we start there? The very facile outsider’s interpretation of this is you go 3-0 without JT Toppin, but at some point, not having your best player was going to catch up with you. Was this loss a catch-up-with-you game?
Grant McCasland: Yeah, and let’s give TCU credit. We talk about the NCAA Tournament and everybody says matchups — I’m being honest, this was not a great matchup for us. I mean, they’re a great offensive rebounding team right now.
When people ask me about JT Toppin, like, what’s it going to be like playing without him, as great as he is on offense, I felt like our offense could have real flow to it (even without him). We had such good guards and I knew our guys that hadn’t played had different attributes that would be hard to play against. So we could still keep the same threat of who we were offensively. But I was really concerned about our perimeter defense, our paint defense and JT’s just rebounding because he’s such a physical guy, such an elite rebounder. It really concerned me, those things. That’s what TCU is great at, man.
Seth: How do you fix that, because we know that JT is done for the year?
McCasland: We still played against Iowa State and Cincinnati. They’re both physical teams, too. So it isn’t like we can’t do it. I think what we saw was their guards actually rebounded really well in that game — TCU’s did. So what our guards have been doing is rebounding down. Well, now we have to box those guys out. And I thought their wing physicality was really where we ended up getting torched.
And so I think it’ll be a learning opportunity for those guys that are playing way more minutes now — the Luke Bamgboyes, the Josiah Moseleys — so they understand the edge that we have to do this with every night, because you know, we’ve been teaching this to JT, so that’s an area that we just haven’t had a lot of problems. And these guys haven’t gone through the length and the physicality every night.
I just thought we took a step back and it’s not an alarming deal for the future. It’s more a great opportunity for us to make sure that our attention is on it moving forward and our guys understand the difference.
Andy Katz: Grant, take me through the emotions of when you’re in a game, your best player, Big 12 Player of the Year, goes down. You probably assume it’s pretty severe, you gotta coach a game and then you gotta deal with the aftermath: the emotions of the player, potential family, all that. What was it like to go through the game part while so worried about what comes after?
McCasland: Yeah, when it happened, it was a transition play. He goes to the ground. And JT never stays on the ground, I mean, ever. When he hit the ground, he laid there and I heard — his teammate in high school is on our roster and he’s an unbelievable leader for us. His name’s Jazz Henderson. He’s super tough. He talks mess to people. He’s the heart of our timeout sometimes. He’s a coach on the floor. He’s unbelievable. And I just hear him yelling to JT like, get up, man, get up. And I just know he’s trying to will JT into it. And JT looks at our trainer who — we’re all really close, you know, when you get to this point, Mike Neal’s super close. He’s like, Mike, come here. I can’t get up, you know, it popped. And then, at that point, everybody’s, no longer sighing a deep breath. You’re like, this is sad. This is bad.
So we helped him get off and we finished the game and we ended up losing, obviously at Arizona State. We go up into that coach’s locker room and Mike comes in and gives us the news that we probably didn’t want to hear and knew. He’s like, this could possibly be his ACL. And at that point I’m looking at our whole coaching staff. And there’s guys crying in there, man.
People think it’s tied to like, where’d our season go, man. Those dudes, when you’re like this, you love JT Toppin and you know what he means to us. And you know how hard this is going to be for him. And then you go into the locker room and there’s disappointment in there. JT sitting in the corner with ice on his knee. And then you’re just trying to figure out how quickly we can get the results so that we can move forward one way or the other to have it determined. Like this is what it is.
So we get back, they do the MRI and then we get the phone call in the early part of the next day, that let’s go to the doctor’s office and meet as a group — his agent was in town. Just being in that doctor’s office with JT when he got the news was really hard, because he’s weeping in a way that there’s a realness to, and I try to explain this to our team: It’s okay to be super sad, man, and to go through this together.
And there’s guys on our team the next day that were bawling their eyes out for him. And JT is just, you know, weeping. And I just put my arm around him and love him and say, I don’t know why this happened, but I believe that there’s some real growth that’s gonna come through this and you don’t have to know all the answers right now. Just know we love you and you’re gonna be in this journey with everybody together, and whatever you’re going to need out of this, you’re gonna be stronger because of it. And I believe that with my entire heart, man.
I just wanted him to hear that and that’s all I wanted him to hear, that we’re gonna be with him and that he’s gonna be better because of it. But it’s okay to be crushed by this and I wanted our team to be crushed by it, so that they could feel it and be there for JT and not act like we’re moving on without him. ‘Cause we’re not — we’re not going to be the same without him. We can be great, but we’re not going to be the same. And that’s where you turn the page and then you try to include him in everything we’re doing still. I mean, he’s still the heart of our team, his competitiveness. Like when we were getting our tail kicked by Illinois, he was the one in the locker room that spoke up when we were losing.
We lost to Houston. At Houston, some guys came into the locker room and I wasn’t in there, but a lot of people were that are staff members. And they said, hey, don’t worry. We’ll get Houston back when they come to our place. And JT’s like, screw that man. We should have won today. He’s just the heart of this team. And that isn’t going to change, but how we’re going to win needs to be different. And so I think walking everybody through that, but still having JT as the heart of our team has kind of been the most important part moving forward. And believing that JT’s best days are ahead and so are our team’s.
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Seth: Grant, I remember early in the season, particularly around the Duke game, when you had a number of injuries, basically no bench and then you had foul trouble in that game. You said, we’re a no-excuse program. I thought that was a great phrase, man — a no-excuse program. How do you apply that principle to what you’re facing now as you head into March Madness?
McCasland: Yeah, I mean, what you do is you look at your next opponent and you go, how do we win this game? I mean, that’s the reality of this. Like who plays is obviously a part of it, but the schedule, that doesn’t change. We play BYU, and that’s what’s happening on Saturday. So how do we win this game?
And I’ll tell you this, the joy of this is the guys and our staff that you get to do this with every day. It’s not the result, it’s the journey — you wake up and you get to see how you can make each other better. That’s the heart behind this. And that’s the part that takes away the individual component, which everybody seems to want to focus on externally. All these guys have such a pressure from their agent, from whoever’s around them to do individual things. But there’s nothing like being a part of a team, man. Nothing. The greatest opportunity we get is to be there for each other.
Like, how do we make what we’re doing the best it can be in the face of adversity and another opponent, knowing really the opponent is ourselves and the people and the individuals that people are trying to be? That’s the thing I keep communicating to our team. The way we lose isn’t losing the game. The way we lose is trying to make this about us as individuals and not what’s best for us together. And that’s the part of life that I think is the best learning that we can do. And so that’s what I keep pushing for, man. That’s what we keep pushing for.
And that’s how we’ll move forward with this group to help us get where we want to get. That keeps the focus on improvement, not on what we don’t have and what we didn’t do against TCU. I’m telling you, it was 50 to 48, we were winning the game against TCU with 11 minutes to go. And you watch those possessions, just like anybody does. I’m sure Iowa State did this when they lost to us the other day. Well, if we just would have done this on this possession, and it’s minor things that people can do, they’re capable of doing it.
Moving forward gives you the best chance to move forward as a team. So man, I just love this group. I really do. I believe in them with all my heart. And I’ve been in enough individual games where I’ve seen these guys come through collectively. You got to be willing to do it every night.
Andy: Two weeks ago, we were doing the Mock Selection (exercise) and it came up about what we do with Texas Tech. Then, the top 16 reveal comes out, and you’re still in the top four lines. Then you win, later that afternoon, and you end up winning three in a row before the TCU game. What that said to the college basketball world was, we are judging Texas Tech on the body of their work and we’re not going to say, they don’t have their best player, let’s knock them down. What did that tell you about the way the selection committee did view you at that moment and will view you going forward?
McCasland: This is hard. I mean, it’s difficult. And I don’t blame people for having an opinion that said we should be a way lower seed. We still have Christian Anderson. And if you watch our guard play, our guard play is awesome. Last postseason, we lost to Florida. And if you watch the end of that game, it was great guard play (that got them the win). Respectfully, you got to have a great team no matter what, and it’s physical, and rebounding is important but man, I believe in what we’re doing and I have confidence.
Luke Bamgboye, Josiah Moseley did not play this season very much. We put our schedule together — which was one of the most difficult schedules in all of college basketball — thinking all those guys would be playing more. What people don’t know is that I think Luke Bamgboye and Josiah Moseley and Marial Akuentok are really good players. They’re long roll players. They all give something different: blocking shots. We blocked more shots in the last four games than we have basically all season long. So our defense can be different and better. And we’ve also had more dunks in the last four games than we did basically in all of league play because those guys are dunking the ball on long rolls. And so the way we’re doing it actually can be just as efficient as long as we can apply some physicality to how we’re playing.
So I don’t blame anybody for saying they should be way lower seeded. And then some people say, let’s judge them on their body of work because — but I get the benefit of watching us in practice every day. And I’m telling you this, and I believe this with all my heart: I think we got one of the best teams in college basketball and I believe we can still win the whole thing.
Now, matchups are a big part of this, as I’m telling you against TCU. But we did wear down in a weird way going into this TCU game because of the emotion of all of it and it being senior night. We were clunky in this game, man. And I’ll take a lot of responsibility on that. But if you asked me in these games, how did we win at Iowa State? How did we beat Duke in that game? And how do you win these games? Christian Anderson played unbelievable at the end of that Duke game.
I think we got enough pieces that we’re a legit three, four seed in regards to how we’re playing. Could you argue a two? No. If we beat TCU, I think we could have been in those discussions; if we were to run the table in the Big 12. But I honestly think we got a top four seed team in regards to how we can compete and win in the Big 12 and in the NCAA Tournament.
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