Odds are you aren't like that bettor at the SuperBook at Westgate Las Vegas who, in November, put $1,500 on Texas Tech to win the national title at 200-1 odds. That bettor might have been the only person outside the Texas Tech locker room who even thought the Red Raiders had a chance. Not even fellow Big 12 coaches picked Chris Beard's team; Texas Tech was predicted to finish seventh in their preseason poll. And that made sense. Even though Texas Tech had made its first Elite Eight under Beard last season, they lost five of their top six scorers. This was a completely new team.
Except nobody took into account two things: That Chris Beard is a damn genius, and that Jarrett Culver is a mid-lottery pick.
This Texas Tech team is one of the best stories of this college basketball season. They looked good early on, with solid wins over USC, Nebraska and Memphis, before giving Duke and Zion Williamson fits during a pre-Christmas loss at Madison Square Garden. They ripped through the Big 12 season, sharing with Kansas State the regular season Big 12 title (and ending Kansas' reign at the top). They did it in the grittiest way possible. Texas Tech basketball may not always be pretty. But it's always a tight-knit team, with a historically good defense.
Here are five reasons why Texas Tech's first Final Four will end in the school's first national title.
1. Defense wins championships, and Texas Tech has pretty clearly the best defense in college basketball: Did I say it's the best defense in college basketball? That's slightly understating things. Look at KenPom.com, the all-in-one college basketball stats page. It lists Texas Tech's adjusted defensive efficiency at 84.0 points per 100 possessions, the best in college basketball, 2.2 points per 100 possessions better than the second-best defense (Michigan) and 4.5 points per 100 possessions better than the third-best defense (Kansas State). They're in their own league. But get this: KenPom.com has been measuring defensive efficiency in college basketball since the 2001-02 season. Texas Tech has the site's top defensive rating...ever. Better than the defensively dominant Kentucky team that went 38-1 in 2014-15 (84.4 points per 100 possessions). Better than Virginia coach Tony Bennett's best defensive team (85.5 points per 100 possessions in 2014-15). Better than Rick Pitino's best defensive group (84.8 points per 100 possessions in 2012-13, when Louisville won the national title). And better than John Calipari's best Memphis team (which allowed 84.2 points per 100 possessions in 2008-09, his final year at the school.)
2. Texas Tech has arguably the single biggest basketball talent left in the tournament: If you want to argue for DeAndre Hunter, fine. But a big performance in the Final Four could rocket Jarrett Culver into the top 5 in June's NBA draft. (He's already assured of being a lottery pick.) The long, lean wing has divided some NBA executives: He can do everything on a basketball court, but does he have one single elite talent? He has shown some bravura performances on the big stage. In Texas Tech's final game of the Big 12 season, he went into Hilton Coliseum - no easy place to play - and dropped 31 points on Iowa State with 4-of-8 3-point shooting. And while Culver struggled against Gonzaga in the Elite Eight - he made only 5 of 19 shots - his team proved that they can win without his best effort.
3. Texas Tech can bang home 3-pointers when it matters most: There's one connective tissue in the Red Raiders' six losses this year: In each loss, they shot 33 percent or worse from 3-point range, below their season average of 36.5 percent that ranks a respectable 67th in college hoops. This is not a live-by-the-3-pointer, die-by-the-3-pointer type of team. Less than 30 percent of their points come from 3-point range, ranking 247th in the game in percentage of points coming from beyond the arc. But Davide Morretti (46.3 percent from beyond the arc) and Matt Mooney (38.1 percent) can make 3-pointers when they're called upon.
4. Chris Beard can really, really coach: There's a reason Chris Beard's name is being tossed around as one of the best coaches in America. It's not just because his team is in the Final Four, though it's certainly highlighted by that fact. He lost 5 of his top 6 scorers from last year's Elite Eight team and was able to get this new group believing by the preseason that they were a true Final Four contender. (In the preseason, Big 12 coaches picked Texas Tech to finish seventh.) Two graduate transfers have been key for Texas Tech to rebuild on the fly: Matt Mooney (who transferred from South Dakota) and Tariq Owens (St. John's).
5. They are all-in on that underdog, chip-on-the-shoulder mentality: Sure, it's always a cliche when coaches get their players to believe in themselves because nobody else believed in them. With Texas Tech, that cliche comes to life. Their mantra is the old Ben Hogan saying, "The secret is in the dirt." You can see it in their defense, how they outwork anyone they go up against. It's a tone that's set by Beard, who is the exact opposite of a blueblood coach - in the five years before getting the Texas Tech job in 2016, Beard was a semipro coach in South Carolina, then coached at Division III McMurry University, Division II Angelo State, and low-major Division I University of Arkansas at Little Rock. His underrecruited players are the same way; none of them were considered top-100 recruits coming out of high school.
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