BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAY

October 18, 2023

Grant McCasland

Texas Tech Red Raiders

Media Day Press Conference

GRANT McCASLAND: Surreal moment. Got the opportunity to play in the Big 12 the first year the conference was formed. "Play" is probably a loose term. I didn't play much. Got to be a part of it as an assistant under an awesome coach in Scott Drew, and then got the opportunity to start our career under James Dickey at Texas Tech as the director of basketball operations in the Big 12.

It's awesome to be back and be a part of it as a head coach, and thrilled about just the opportunity to represent the Red Raiders and really the history most currently of competing for a National Championship game and just the history that goes with Texas Tech basketball. Thrilled to be here and to be a part of it.

Q. You brought up Scott Drew. You've got another former colleague in Jerome Tang in the conference. What have they meant to you in your professional career and on a personal level?

GRANT McCASLAND: What a tremendous group of guys. You can talk about how great they are as basketball coaches, that's obvious for the world to see, but what people don't see is what amazing men they are. They're great husbands. They're great fathers. They care about the people that are around them.

Someone asked me earlier, what is it you learned most, and I think when you're around Coach Drew he's always trying to do something for you. He's always trying to help you in some way. He's just got a heart to give, and in a world where a lot of people are trying to get, I think what represents those guys, they're always giving to other people.

Coach Tang sends flowers to his coaches' wives. Just thinking of things and thinking of other people first before yourself. They've just been great representatives for me on just how to live life, not just coach basketball.

Q. Obviously Texas Tech and Texas have a long history of playing each other in basketball. Just wondering if you'd welcome the opportunity to play Texas in the future.

GRANT McCASLAND: Yeah, definitely. My first opportunity to play college basketball and the staff, Coach Terry, was an assistant at Baylor at the time, so we've known each other a long time and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.

You know, I think it's hard to say at this point just because of how things have changed so quickly, but I know we would definitely welcome the opportunity in the future and definitely would look forward to that possibility.

Q. You guys made it an emphasis to go out and grab Joe Toussaint in the portal this season. Talk about what you have seen from the West Virginia transfer in this time span.

GRANT McCASLAND: Yeah, honestly, with our roster and the transfer portal we've got five new guys, and one common thing they all have is they played in the NCAA Tournament last year. So that was a focus of ours. Obviously when we got to the end, Joe was one of the final pieces to the roster, and I think what we had to start with is who's got the grit and the mentality to help us early to know that you're going to have to win some games in different ways in this league, especially defensively.

Joe is such a great competitor, and when you talk to people about Joe, what they'll tell you is he's tremendous in the locker room, and everybody loves playing with him. If you can get those components with a new team and you can get that unselfishness, I think that's where you start with Joe.

But then just in practices, he's been a great teammate. We chart how many times people give high fives or interactions, how you pat people on the back, whatever, and he leads our team, and it's not close.

I think those things are honestly what we've learned to appreciate, and while we love him, I think he'll really help us in a lot of ways offensively, getting into the paint, putting pressure on the rim. He's gotten better as a decision maker. But more than anything, Joe has been a tremendous teammate.

Q. Obviously the last couple years you guys played one of the slowest tempos in the country. I'm curious how you balance that and the success that it had with recruits probably wanting to play a little faster at a high level like Texas Tech?

GRANT McCASLAND: I can't imagine what everybody said bad about us in recruiting. Having played the slowest pace in the country in the last two years and having one of the best defenses -- we also had the best road neutral record in the country the last couple years.

So we felt like that give us the best chance to win, and especially getting into the NCAA Tournament, how do we win games in the NCAA Tournament. We looked at that at the end.

Honestly, Coach Beard, Coach Adams, allowed us to really study that 2019 championship game against Virginia, which had two of the slower paced teams, and we went out and met with them, and that's where they helped us.

We put the side defense in three, four years ago, and it really has helped give us what we felt like was three conference championships in different ways.

We just felt like it gave us the best chance to win. If you turn the page and people can look at our roster, we've got an extremely athletic team. We don't have the same constraints maybe with our roster that we did at North Texas where maybe it was a shorter roster of guys that we felt like could help us win the National Championship.

We've branched out, hired a great guy, Dave Smart, who's played on the 24-second shot clock in Canada for his entire career. So that's a different mentality.

Really excited about how we can put pressure on defenses quicker. We've been doing some three seconds to the three-point line on possessions to try to create more tempo. We played in a scrimmage the other day and we had way more possessions than we did historically at North Texas.

I just think the ultimate answer for this is we're going to play what fits our team and gives us the best chance to win in the Big 12. I do think what you'll see in our roster complements us pushing the basketball and playing faster. And not so everybody feels good about themselves, even though everybody wants to talk about how fast you play, but because I do think he gives us the best chance to win with this team.

Now, when you get in Big 12 play and injuries, that can dictate a lot of things of what you end up doing with your roster, but at this time I'm really excited about the way we're playing and I think people will see a different type of basketball than maybe what they've seen the last few years.

Q. Can you just describe what an addition like Cincinnati does for the Big 12?

GRANT McCASLAND: Yeah. Actually I coached a player in junior college that signed to play at Cincinnati, and having grown up in an era where Cincinnati basketball regularly played in the NCAA Tournaments and went to deep runs and just the area and the love for basketball, I think there's just a lot of excitement with the new additions, and Cincy being one of them.

When you think of Cincinnati, you think of basketball. I do, growing up. So I know Wes has done a tremendous job there and will continue to grow the program, and excited to have all the new additions to the Big 12.