If you took the best players who have transferred out of Texas Tech in recent years and are still active in college basketball and put them on the floor together, it would be national title contender led by two potential All-Americans and several others who are key players at their current schools. The horde of exiting talent at Texas Tech in recent years is among the reasons why it’s so impressive what first-year Red Raiders’ coach Grant McCasland is accomplishing.
McCasland has TTU projected as a No. 6 seed for the NCAA Tournament in CBS Sports Bracketology, despite the fact the Red Raiders have been, well, raided by the transfer portal unlike any other high-major program. You could fill two quality rotations with the talent that has stopped at Texas Tech before transferring elsewhere amid a chaotic few years for the program.
Headlining the list of former Texas Tech players now rostered elsewhere in college basketball are Kevin McCullar (Kansas) and Terrence Shannon (Illinois), just to name two of the most high-profile examples. The Red Raiders are far from alone in having an abundance of outbound transfers. It’s just the way things go in this era, especially following a coaching change (or two coaching changes in the Red Raiders’ case.)
First-year St. John’s coach Rick Pitino doesn’t seem to like the roster he assembled. Perhaps if he’d kept some of the player’s from last year’s team who have become major contributors elsewhere, the Red Storm would be in better shape.
Nearly every program in the sport has at least one ex-player thriving at another school this season. But a much smaller percentage have an entire team worth of quality ex-players balling out in other locales. For some programs, their contingent of former players compete quite well with the actual 2023-24 roster.
That is certainly the case at schools like Texas Tech, St. John’s, Vanderbilt and West Virginia, all of whom have…
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