LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – The No. 11 Texas Tech Red Raiders (16-4, 6-1) are playing their best basketball of the season, and still have several weeks left before the Big 12 Basketball tournament.<\/p>\n
Their five-game streak includes wins over higher-ranked teams at the time, BYU and Houston- avenging a 69-65 defeat on the road earlier this month. The Red Raiders are now on a seven-day hiatus before they return to play at Saturday morning at UCF, and will look to avenge last season\u2019s 87-83 loss on New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n
During Saturday\u2019s post-game news conference, Tech\u2019s head basketball coach Grant McCasland credits his two veteran starters- point guard Christian Anderson and forward JT Toppin, for both the win and their success at this point in the season. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt starts with Christian Anderson. I mean, he\u2019s making all the right plays. And then it\u2019s about our seam attack and the ability to make the next play and what that is, and JT was in a lot of those and JT was phenomenal. I mean, you want to talk about the next play. I mean, he was unbelievable at making the next play,\u201d McCasland said. \u201cChristian didn\u2019t come off the floor. I mean, those two dudes just carry the load in the middle of the floor and I just think they were magnificent, man. Just really were, and that\u2019s a big reason why our team (won).\u201d<\/p>\n
Toppin was named the \u201cBig 12 Player of the Week\u201d Monday for the third time in the last four weeks. While he recorded 31 points and 12 rebounds in Saturday\u2019s win, Anderson had 12 points, but was 1-for-7 in three-point attempts. However, McCasland says Anderson\u2019s success should be measured by wins instead of statistics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, he\u2019s just doing an unbelievable job of orchestrating this,\u201d he said. \u201cCome on, man! He\u2019s winning, and that\u2019s what a point guard should be judged by and trust me, he\u2019s going to have plenty of days where he can go out there and rock with the ball and make plays for himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other lead scorers were Donovan Atwell and Jaylen Petty, both had 18 points Saturday. Josiah Moseley had six points, both from three-pointers made in the first half. McCasland says this number is also astonishing because of his limited time of practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor him to come in there and to contribute like that, and to your point, against Houston in an atmosphere and just the craziness that this game is, remarkably impressive,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, he\u2019s coachable and he\u2019s talented and he has a good feel for the game and he\u2019s physical and he\u2019s got the athleticism and knows for the ball and he obviously has the skill, but he\u2019s nowhere near ready really to go out there and play significant minutes, but the fact he gave us 10 minutes in a game like this just says a lot about his character and who he is as a person. And man, his contribution was huge in the first half and he\u2019s obviously just getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCasland also says he expects to keep seeing strides made by the younger players on the bench. <\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, Tyree Bryan, Josiah Moseley, I mean, Nolan Groves, I mean, you pick it. Anybody that comes in off the bench that can give us a lift is going to be a huge bonus for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Red Raiders will seek out their sixth-consecutive win Saturday morning. Tip-off set for 11 a.m. CT at UCF\u2019s Additional Financial Arena.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – The No. 11 Texas Tech Red Raiders (16-4, 6-1) are playing their best basketball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[315,29904,2692,168,170,169,24912,8177,58952,33227,415,19422,24410],"class_list":["post-139669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-big-12","tag-big-12-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-red-raiders-basketball","tag-texas-tech-basketball","tag-texas-tech-hoops","tag-texas-tech-mens-basketball","tag-texas-tech-red-raiders","tag-ucf","tag-university-of-central-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}