Defend the culture.
That was the phrase scrolling across the walls of the weight room in Texas Tech’s first June practice video.
Blink and you may have missed it. If you weren’t paying attention, you certainly did. But the work was being done. Work that, quite frankly, no other team in the country was doing as Texas Tech prepared to represent Team USA at the World University Games in Germany in July.
The Lady Raiders would go on to win silver at the event, doing so with a short roster that did not include Bailey Maupin or Snudda Collins — the team’s two leading scorers this season — playing a single minute.
It was there, thousands of miles from Lubbock, that several within the program say they first realized what this group could become.
“I think when we went to Germany and did so well there and played for a gold medal — really with a shorter roster — and saw kids step up and battle in adverse situations and environments, I knew this team had something special in it,” head coach Krista Gerlich said. “We were going to surprise a lot of people this year.”
Texas Tech wins the Silver Medal at World University Games representing Team USA in July
Among those who emerged from that trip with a new level of confidence was Jalynn Bristow.
A year ago, Bristow played just 11 minutes per game, averaging 3.7 points, 2.4 rebounds and 0.3 blocks. The lone junior in what would eventually become a nine-senior rotation suddenly looked like something more in Germany.
Bristow finished the event fourth overall in rebounding at 8.5 per game and tenth in three-point percentage, knocking down 44 percent from beyond the arc.
In the recap of the team’s gold medal game loss to a pro-laden China squad — a result that still earned Team USA silver — the performance prompted a simple thought:
Hello big time if that translates to NCAA play.
“When we got in Germany, we locked in so quick on the court,” Bristow said. “When we got out there, it was definitely like, ‘Yeah, this team is really good.’”
The growth carried straight into the season where Bristow became a full-time starter, averaging 27 minutes per game while posting 11 points and 5.7 rebounds. She also led the Big 12 in blocked shots at 2.1 per game.
While the 44 percent mark from three did not fully translate across the full season, Bristow has been scorching down the stretch — shooting 53.5 percent from deep over Texas Tech’s last five games. And her overall versatility has placed her in rare statistical company: she is one of only three players in the country averaging at least 5.5 rebounds and 2.1 blocks while shooting at least 31 percent from three.
In other words: a unicorn.
One of, if not the most, improved players in the Big 12 this season, Bristow earned honorable mention All-Big 12 honors. Something she credits to being around such a veteran team all offseason.
“It really was this summer,” Bristow said as to what helped her make those improvements. “We have a team full of seniors and a lot of upperclassmen. Everybody’s mature and ready to go. Every day it’s two steps forward, we don’t have any steps backwards. Everybody’s helping each other out.”
One of those seniors was, of course, the only four-year Lady Raider on the roster — and now the fourth-all-time leading scorer in Texas Tech history — Bailey Maupin.
For Maupin, the moment represents the culmination of a journey that has included both the growing pains of a rebuild and the satisfaction of seeing it through to the end.
“I’ve been here four years, and through those four years we’ve had ups and we’ve had downs,” Maupin said. “But being able to end my career going into the tournament and hoping to make a long run is the perfect way to go out, and I couldn’t have asked for a better story or a better ending to my college career.”
That perspective has helped define the mentality of this senior-laden roster.
Texas Tech’s nine seniors have combined for hundreds of college games and, in Maupin’s words, essentially a lifetime of basketball experience. With that comes a simple understanding of what March means.
“Some of us have played 22 years of basketball. That’s a long time,” Maupin said. “When you’re a senior and you’re getting to the end of the season, it’s do or die. Every game could be your last game. That’s not to scare you — it’s to put a hunger inside of you to leave everything out on the court.”
For Maupin, that hunger has always been tied to something else as well: restoring the expectation that Texas Tech belongs in the NCAA Tournament.
“Coach has said every year that this is where our program should be,” she said. “This is where our program has been in the past and where it needs to get back to.”
No one understands that history — or the weight of it — quite like head coach Krista Gerlich.
Before returning to Lubbock as head coach, Gerlich lived the golden era of Lady Raider basketball as a player on Texas Tech’s 1993 national championship team. The Lady Raiders reached the NCAA Tournament in all four seasons of her playing career, making March feel like a certainty rather than an aspiration.
When she took the Texas Tech job, restoring that expectation was the mission. But the road back proved steeper than she anticipated.
“When you are a Lady Raider and you walk into a room with a Double T on your chest, that used to mean something,” Gerlich said. “The hardest thing for me when I got here was that the brand wasn’t respected anymore for Lady Raider basketball.”
For a program that once filled arenas and hung championship banners, the reality of rebuilding that reputation, with recruits, with opponents and even with the sport itself… was sobering.
“So when I walked into people’s living rooms with a Double T on my chest, it didn’t mean much because of where the program was,” Gerlich said. “We had to build the brand back up and the reputation back up.”
Now having restored a bit of that respect, for Gerlich, the moment on Sunday hearing their name called was one of pride and perspective.
“It’s crazy that it’s been 13 years since this program has danced,” she said. “But it was absolutely my mission when I got the job to be able to get us back here.”
The players who helped bring that vision to life know exactly what it took to get there. They gave her a standing ovation when she stood up to speak to the crowd just before the Selection Show started.
“I’m super happy for her,” Maupin said of Gerlich. “She deserves all the awards for what she’s done for this program and what she’s done for Texas Tech women’s basketball over the past couple of years.”
Yet even as the drought ends, Gerlich has been quick to remind her team that simply returning to March cannot be the final goal.
“This is not a destination,” she said. “This needs to be an annual thing. It needs to be an expectation — like it used to be.”
Defend the culture, that first practice video said back in June.
Mission accomplished. Next step: restore what once defined Lady Raider basketball, success in March.
After a summer in Germany, a veteran roster and a season built on belief, Texas Tech is headed to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 13 years.
Waiting on the other side of that return is No. 10 seed Villanova, a mid-major darling actually ranked just ahead of Texas Tech in rating systems like Bart Torvik.
Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m. CT Friday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Win, and the Lady Raiders will face either Jacksonville or host seed LSU in the second round.
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