BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAY

October 19, 2022

Mark Adams

Texas Tech Red Raiders

Media Day Press Conference

COACH ADAMS: Scheduling is always an important part of winning. It wasn't good timing, I've got to follow Coach Huggins, a hall of famer.

A little bit about our basketball team. We're very young. We've got five true freshmen. And we've got seven underclassmen. Our biggest challenge for our coaching staff is to get these guys thinking older and playing older and playing with some maturity.

Really like this team. We think we have a skill set that's a little different than last year. We've got some guys we feel like can shoot the 3-point shot better. And overall better ball handling team.

So we think the skill set there is going to be a team that's going to be a little more efficient. I could go on and on.

Q. What have you seen so far from Elijah Fisher?

COACH ADAMS: I've seen a lot of great things. He's the youngest player on our team. One of the most highly recruited players we've ever had with the Red Raiders, but he's playing with a lot of physicality, maturity. I already think he's going to be one of our best defensive players, which is somewhat of a surprise for a young guy to be able to have that kind of defensive instincts and maturity. High expectations for him, and he's just done extremely well.

Q. I think last year I asked you about delegating and how you had so many responsibilities as an elite assistant. You said you were going to keep those responsibilities while adding more as a coach. This year were you able to delegate more or did you find out you had a great year last year, you want to keep doing what you're doing?

COACH ADAMS: I want to delegate everything. I'm tired of doing all the work. I think as a leader there's a lot of responsibility that goes with that. We've got a great staff.

I'm still going to do most of the defense. I'm going to share some of those offensive responsibilities, I've got Al Pinkins, he was an associate coach, came from Florida. And Steve Green from South Plains College. They won three national championships. A great friend, a really smart guy, a lot smarter guy than I am.

Those guys are going to help me more on the offensive side of the ball. I'm making a few changes. We're trying to be a little more aggressive getting up and down the floor a little quicker and getting a little more flow to our offense, again, (indiscernible) the spacing.

It will be I think a little bit more aggressive attacking-type offense than you've seen in the past.

Q. This year, again, a lot of brand-new faces the team, like last season where had you to build the roster from scratch. Did it make it easier to figure out how to get those guys how to gel considering you had the season last year, you had a bunch of new faces that were really starting at Texas Tech for the first time?

COACH ADAMS: We have these five freshmen, and we have five transfers. That's 10 new guys, only three back and one starter.

So the challenge is always -- I think every team, every coach, every year, you're always trying to get these guys to get connected. And the attitude of the "we" not the "me". And that is no different this year.

We've got a lot of guys that already had bought into that in previous programs, and we were very, very selective on who to bring in and did our due diligence to find the right guys that had the attitude that wanted to be coached. That's helped us a little bit.

But still we're a long ways from trying to get this team to be a team and a team that's going to really work together and play together in order to do that. To reach the potential, they'll have to be a very efficient team. We don't have like one or two guys on this team that are just going to be able to take over and lead. So there's strength in numbers. We'll have to make sure our guys are working together to get that done.

Q. Everybody talks about how competitive the Big 12 is. But when you look at just the four Texas schools in the conference, all four are in the AP Preseason Poll to start off with. Just how competitive does that make it just among those four?

COACH ADAMS: One of the things I learned last year, there's just not any easy night in the Big 12. And every team that comes ready to play, you better be prepared. We've got four teams in Texas, they're very well-coached and have great programs and really good, talented players back.

It's going to be a tough league, and just the journey around Texas won't be any fun.