C.J. Moore of The Athletic is one of their national college basketball reporters. His Top 25 comes out every Monday. He has Tech at No. 12 with his reasoning:
In defense of the other voters, the Red Raiders have played a weak schedule thus far, but they’re crushing those teams. At KenPom, the predicted winning margins for the three games has been 77; the actual margin has been 101. Texas Tech was missing its two top point guards (Elijah Hawkins and Christian Anderson) in the first two games. Both came off the bench last week against Wyoming in a 96-49 win, which KenPom predicted would be a 21-point win.
It’s possible that Texas Tech is this year’s Iowa State, a team beating up on lesser competition early, which could be a sign it’s about to be way better in the Big 12 than expected and the computers are the first to catch on. (Cincinnati is another candidate.) The one difference was that Iowa State had a dominant defense, while Texas Tech is elite offensively. The Red Raiders lead the country in effective field goal percentage (66.3) and are shooting 47.8 percent from deep.
No. 12 Texas Tech
Texas Tech is the team the computers and humans are farthest apart on. Texas Tech ranks No. 9 at KenPom, No. 10 at Evan Miya and No. 12 at Bart Torvik. The Red Raiders have yet to appear in the AP Top 25, despite my best efforts. I was one of 18 voters to rank Texas Tech last week and slotted them the highest, at No. 11.In defense of the other voters, the Red Raiders have played a weak schedule thus far, but they’re crushing those teams. At KenPom, the predicted winning margins for the three games has been 77; the actual margin has been 101. Texas Tech was missing its two top point guards (Elijah Hawkins and Christian Anderson) in the first two games. Both came off the bench last week against Wyoming in a 96-49 win, which KenPom predicted would be a 21-point win.
It’s possible that Texas Tech is this year’s Iowa State, a team beating up on lesser competition early, which could be a sign it’s about to be way better in the Big 12 than expected and the computers are the first to catch on. (Cincinnati is another candidate.) The one difference was that Iowa State had a dominant defense, while Texas Tech is elite offensively. The Red Raiders lead the country in effective field goal percentage (66.3) and are shooting 47.8 percent from deep.
