Battle-tested OK State, No. 15 Texas Tech open grueling Big 12 slate
With plenty of tests behind them, Oklahoma State and 15th-ranked Texas Tech have learned about strengths and weaknesses, with each team making progress.
What matters now, though, is how that translates into success in the rugged Big 12 Conference.
The Cowboys (12-1) and Red Raiders (10-3) open league play in Lubbock, Texas, on Saturday, the first step of an 18-game grind that doesn't offer a lot of breathe-easy opportunities.
"I don't know if you can ever say you're prepared for the Big 12, but you better be ready for it being a grind," Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland said. "It's going to be a fight every time you step on the floor. You don't have to be perfect, but you have to have some real legit competitiveness and understand that you have to grind on every possession."
Grinding is something the Red Raiders have embraced more in their last two games following back-to-back games of allowing 90 points or more in a loss to then-No. 17 Arkansas (93-86) and a shootout win against Northern Colorado (101-90). Texas Tech responded with one of the more shocking wins of the season when it erased a 17-point deficit to knock off third-ranked Duke in Madison Square Garden last Saturday.
That was the Red Raiders' first win against a ranked in four tries this season and should help their confidence as they enter the frying pan of the Big 12 with six teams ranked as the league season begins, four in the top 10.
McCasland just doesn't want his team to rest on that laurel.
"We can think that since we beat a program like Duke that we're figured things out," McCasland said. "We're just now scratching the surface of who we can be and starting to understand how hard we have to fight on every possession."
The Cowboys are not one of the ranked Big 12 teams, but they take the court Saturday off to their best start since 2014-15. Under second-year coach Steve Lutz, OSU has reinvented itself offensively and ranks second in the Big 12 (15th nationally) with 91.2 points a game. The Cowboys have scored 90 or more points eight times this season, all victories.
Five players are averaging double digits in the scoring department, led by sharpshooter Anthony Roy's 17.3 points a game. Roy is shooting at a 42.4% clip from 3-point range (28 of 66), while teammate Vyctorius Miller has been even more lethal at 50% (26 of 52) while producing 15.9 points a game.
Those two should benefit from the recent return of 6-foot-10 Parsa Fallah, who played 21 minutes against Bethune Cookman on Monday after missing two games with a back injury. He ranks second in the Big 12 in field-goal percentage (55 of 87 for 63.2%) and is the Cowboys' rebounding leader with 6.2 an outing.
"Night in, night out, Parsa has been the most consistent person on our team, so it's going to be a big difference when he gets back to full speed," Lutz said.
Oklahoma State will certainly need Fallah as close to fully healthy as possible to counter Red Raider star JT Toppin. The preseason All-American generates 21 points and 10.6 rebounds a game to give Texas Tech a powerful paint presence.
Point guard Christian Anderson has balanced Toppin nicely as a scorer (20.6 ppg) and distributor (7.1 assists). He exploded for 23 points in the second half of the win against Duke and followed with 25 in the first half of a victory against Winthrop on Sunday.
As impactful as Toppin is, Texas Tech relies heavily on the 3-point shot with 10.6 makes per game. Anderson and Donovan Atwell both rank in the top five in the Big 12 in 3-pointers per game.