Arizona-Texas Tech scouting report: On dealing with loss at KU, a dual-citizen point guard and koala pellets

No. 16 Texas Tech (18-6, 8-3) at No. 1 Arizona (23-1, 10-1) | McKale Center | 4:30 p.m. | ESPN | 1290-AM, 92.5-FM (Spanish)

Probable starters

ARIZONA

0 G Jaden Bradley (6-3 senior)

5 G Brayden Burries (6-4 freshman)

18 F Ivan Kharchenkov (6-7 freshman)

0 F Koa Peat (6-8 freshman)

13 C Motiejus Krivas (7-2 junior)

Key reserves

3 F Anthony Dell’Orso (6-6 senior)

30 F Tobe Awaka (6-8 senior)

2 F Dwayne Aristode (6-8 freshman)

TEXAS TECH

4 F Christian Anderson (6-3 sophomore)

11 G Jaylen Petty (6-1 freshman)

12 F Donovan Atwell (6-5 senior)

3 F LeJuan Watts (6-6 junior) 

15 C JT Toppin (6-9 junior)

Key reserves

9 C Luke Bamgboye (6-11)

1 F Tyeree Bryan (6-5 senior)

How they match up

Series history: Arizona split two regular-season games with the Red Raiders last season, losing 70-54 in Lubbock and winning 82-73 at McKale Center, before beating TTU 86-80 in the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament. Texas Tech still leads the alltime series between former Border Conference rivals 29-26.

Texas Tech overview: Before joining UA’s Tommy Lloyd on the USA Basketball staff that won the gold medal at the FIBA U19 World Cup last summer, Texas Tech’s Grant McCasland broke through with his own team last season. In just his second season in Lubbock, McCasland led the Red Raiders to a second-place finish in the Big 12 and a run to the NCAA Elite Eight before losing to eventual national champion Florida by just 5 points.

The Red Raiders lost four starters off that team but retained consensus second-team all-American center JT Toppin (thanks to a reported $4 million compensation package). In addition, they returned guard Christian Anderson, who played starter’s minutes last season and also was a leader on the German U19 club that played USA in the gold medal game last summer.

To fill out his rotation, McCasland picked up four major contributors from the transfer portal, keeping the Red Raiders high in Division I experience if not in overall continuity: Wings Donovan Atwell (UNC Greensboro), LeJuan Watts (Washington State) and Tyeree Bryan (Santa Clara), along with British big man Luke Bamgboye (VCU).

Bamgboye has missed 13 games because of knee issues but has made his presence known inside during Texas Tech’s last two games: While playing a combined 29 minutes against West Virginia and Colorado, he had a total of seven blocks and eight rebounds.

Meanwhile, the perimeter transfers have helped the Red Raiders become the ninth-best 3-point percentage team in the country (39.1) and, unlike the Wildcats, they like to shoot it a lot from long range: TTU also ranks 33rd in the number of 3s as a percentage of overall field goals taken.

A third-team all-Southern Conference pick last season, Atwell ranks 43rd nationally in 3-point percentage shooting at 45.1, while Anderson ranks 76th at 43.8%. Watts can get to the basket, shooting 46.1% of his two-point shots while drawing 4.7 fouls per 40 minutes played.

All that perimeter shooting helps create space for Toppin, who has been dominant around the basket as expected. He averages a double-double (21.8 points and 10.5 rebounds), while hitting 59.3% of his two-point shots, blocking 5.0% of opponents’ two-pointers and rebounding 13.4% of the Red Raiders’ misses (the 77th best offensive rebounding percentage in Division I).

He said it: “They're going to put you in a ton of situations where you have to make a decision. They surround an All-American player with great shooters, and that's a great formula. They have a dynamic playmaker (Anderson). They can put the ball in his hands, and he can create shots for others and for himself.

"So they do a really good job of putting you in a bind defensively and they hang a couple things over you.... (saying)  ‘if you start bringing help (on Toppin), we think we've surrounded him with a lot of shooters, and they can do a lot of damage.’ That puts you in a conundrum, for sure." — UA coach Tommy Lloyd

Key players

TEXAS TECH

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

JT Toppin

Toppin is Exhibit A of how the NIL/rev-share era has changed college basketball: That is, he's still playing the college game. Toppin was projected to be a late first round or early second round pick had he stayed in the 2025 NBA Draft — but players must get picked no lower than the middle of the first round to make $4 million, according to the NBA's rookie salary scale.

ARIZONA

Koa Peat

After a big game against his hometown ASU team, the Wildcats’ normally reliable freshman power forward has struggled to make shots inside over his past two games. Against Texas Tech, he’ll be matching up with mostly smaller guys except when Toppin gets in the way.

SIDELINES

Moving on

While there weren’t any Arizona players available for media interviews this week, after the Wildcats returned from their Monday night loss at Kansas, Lloyd said they handled it well.

Arizona had been on a school-record 23-0 start before the Jayhawks beat the Wildcats 82-78.

“I’m sure they don't love it, but they're fine,” Lloyd said. “We work on a culture all year round, to be able to respond to things like this. We obviously knew that losing is part of the equation, so you have to be able to handle that.

“I mean, there's no panic. And, guys, I hate to break it to you, we might lose another game or two or three, I don't know. We could lose Saturday. I don't know, but you’ve got to keep it moving. You have to have faith and trust that you're building for something bigger.”

Promotional whirlwind 

Even before ESPN pulled into town this week to prepare for its "College GameDay" show Saturday, Lloyd and the Wildcats were enveloped in promotions.

While the Big 12 announced it will use an LED-lit glass playing surface for its men’s and women’s tournaments, Arizona revealed special “Galaxy Slam” uniforms it will wear on Feb. 18 against BYU as part of its weeklong celebration of the school’s space ties.

Also, Lloyd became the opening act at the UA Science Center on Wednesday before a presentation on “How Tiny Insects are Driving Big Discoveries in Brain Science,” telling the audience how he studied koala fecal pellets for his thesis as a biology major at Whitman College.

“The findings were crappy,” he said.

While Lloyd declined to say whether he had any input on the design of the Galaxy Slam uniforms, which feature subtle stars in the word "Arizona" and in the side striping, he expressed excitement about connecting UA’s academic and athletic worlds.

The uniforms were “definitely an idea that we kind of talked about as a staff, and we made some connections on the other side of campus,” Lloyd said. “I think it's really cool that to be able to combine those two forces. I love being a college basketball coach because you're part of a bigger university community. I think that's really important.”

When it came to the Big 12’s glass floor idea, Lloyd expressed concern only about how it would treat his players.

“Obviously there's been some discussions about it internally, with them disclosing that it's an option, and they pulled the trigger,” Lloyd said. “I hope it's pretty cool. I'm all about the game, so I hope it doesn't impact play, and if it brings good attention to the conference, I guess that's a good thing.”

Same guy, different country

While McCasland served on Lloyd’s USA staff during the FIBA U19 World Cup last summer, he's also helping develop a player they both had to deal with in the gold medal game.

Even though he's an Atlanta native, Texas Tech guard Christian Anderson showed up as the point guard for Germany, eligible to do so because he's a dual citizen with a father who was born in and played professionally in that country.

Over the seven-game event in Switzerland last summer, Anderson averaged 17.3 points, 4.9 rebounds and 6.6 assists while shooting 42.9% from the field. Along with Washington’s Hannes Steinbach and UConn’s Eric Reibe, Anderson led Germany to a 6-0 record before they ran into Team USA in the final.

In the gold-medal game, Anderson had 18 points and nine assists but hit just 6 of 19 field goals and turned the ball over four times.

For Texas Tech this season, Anderson is averaging 19.3 points, 3.3 rebounds and 7.7 assists while shooting 43.8% from 3-point range — and playing a tireless 38.6 minutes per game.

“Grant said great things about him, and he's a really good player who's continued to get better,” Lloyd said. “You could see it last year ... you could see the next steps happening. Now it's all kind of come together for him.”

Numbers game

4.5: Arizona’s average victory margin after ESPN has had a "GameDay" presence at McKale during the Tommy Lloyd era: A win over Oregon in 2021-22 and a win over UCLA in 2022-23 (when ESPN had only Jay Bilas participating remotely from McKale).

26.5: Percent of shots Arizona takes that are 3-point attempts.

47.0: Percent of shots Texas Tech takes that are 3-point attempts.

— Bruce Pascoe