PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The Arkansas men’s basketball team advanced to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 with its 75-66 win over St. John’s on Saturday at Amica Mutual Pavilion.
The Razorbacks will face 3rd-seeded Texas Tech, which defeated 11th-seeded Drake 77-64 on Saturday in Wichita, Kan., to advance to the next round.
Arkansas and Texas Tech will play Thursday in San Francisco. A time for the game has yet to be announced.
“I'm going to celebrate this one and celebrate our guys being here, and we'll talk about [Arkansas],” Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland said. “We'll have plenty of time to celebrate that. We are excited to move on, and that's been our vision for this the whole time. One thing I do know, we'll have Red Raiders in San Francisco.”
Texas Tech finished second in the Big 12 and is 6-1 in its last 7 games. The Red Raiders lead the all-time series 40-39.
Arkansas won the most recent meeting 68-66 in the 2021 NCAA Tournament second round in Indianapolis.
These are some things to know about Texas Tech.
The coach(es)
McCasland is in his second season as head coach of the Red Raiders, having spent the previous six seasons at North Texas and the one prior at Arkansas State. There has been just one season in which his team did not reach 20 wins — an 18-12 finish in 2021.
He led the 13th-seeded Mean Green to a first-round upset of fourth-seeded Purdue in the NCAA Tournament that season.
McCasland’s offenses are known for their efficiency while playing at a slow-to-moderate pace. Texas Tech is the No. 5 offense in the country this season, per KenPom, and has wins over Houston, BYU, Arizona and Kansas to show for it.
Part of that is because of assistant coach Jeff Linder, who previously coached Wyoming for the previous four seasons. He said he would not have left a head coaching job to work for any other coach than McCasland.
Linder’s offense was similar to what the Red Raiders run now, slow-to-moderate and devastatingly efficient. He led the Cowboys to an NCAA Tournament appearance in 2021 and was a name talked about in power-conference search circles that offseason.
The tandem, with Linder being McCasland’s “offensive coordinator,” per The Athletic, has made Texas Tech into one of the best offenses in the country that rarely turns the ball over.
The Red Raiders have different ways they can score, too. In their first-round game against North Carolina-Wilmington, they took 46 three-point shots. They took 14 against Drake in the second round.
“Our team can really specifically see the game plan, understand it, and everybody can execute it,” McCasland said. “Man, we had a lot of different scenarios. We told everybody, you're going to have to know every position because we're going to need to switch and different people are going to guard different guys.”
All-American JT Toppin
JT Toppin, who spent his freshman season at New Mexico under coach Richard Pitino, has blossomed into one of the nation’s top players this season.
He was voted to the Associated Press All-American Second Team and has averaged 18.1 points and 9.2 rebounds this season while shooting 56% from the field.
Toppin has been more of an inside threat, shooting just 31% from three-point range this season. He has become an excellent driving and post-up threat with his 6-9 frame.
He takes 32% of Texas Tech’s shots and is effective at getting to the free-throw line — where he shoots 70% — as he draws five fouls per 40 minutes.
Defensively, Toppin is one of the nation’s best shot blockers with a 5.5% blocking percentage.
That comes despite Texas Tech being a relatively low-blocking team, with the Red Raiders ranking No. 244 in the country, per KenPom.
Solid defense
Though not a heavy blocking or turnover defense, Texas Tech is rated the nation's No. 37 defense, per KenPom.
The Red Raiders are comfortable playing late in the shot clock on both ends of the floor — part of the reason they had success against Drake — and force their opponents into bad shots. Texas Tech’s opposition, on average, shoot 48% from two-point range and 31% from deep — both in the top 75 in the country.
The Red Raiders also don’t give their opponents many opportunities at the free-throw line, playing a physical-but-clean brand of defense that disrupts shots and only gives teams 33 free throws per 100 field goal attempts.
“They're a physical team. I think that's probably our strength,” Drake coach Ben McCollum said. “We weren't able to get them in situations where we could get to on the ball consistently and get our hands going and stuff like that.”
Supporting cast
Texas Tech is far from a one-man show, though Toppin will be atop every scouting report.
Darrion Williams, who is in his second year in McCasland's system after a season at Nevada, scored 28 points for the Red Raiders against Drake on Saturday and has been a load for teams throughout the season.
Texas Tech, though, runs a relatively short rotation.
Kevin Overton, a sophomore transfer from Drake, is the only non-starter to play more than eight minutes Saturday.
Elijah Hawkins is an undersized lead guard at 5-11 but possesses a high-level passing ability to find Toppin and Williams, while also having a good shot.