TWD 1974 said:
IowaBear said:
Hard disagree. He's by FAR they're most important player. They're a middle of the league team without him. I haven't looked at their schedule down the stretch. Maybe it's easy. But I expect they'll stack some L's
I thought Norchad played well for us last year, but I thought landing Toppin was the best move TTU has made in the last couple of years. Some bigs just make your team a lot better. Toppin was heading to a POY in my view.
And the guy, even before the injury, had pretty much indicated he was coming back to Lubbock next year for his senior year.
JB, you and I are usually on the same page but I kind feel like Iowa on this one. I'm gonna be surprised to see Tech get past the 1st weekend.
The tournament is all about matchups so you never know, but it reminds me of us in 2021-22 when Jonathan went down. Once we had no threat in the middle rebounding or even scoring (sorry Flo, but he wasn't much of a threat on offense or defense in that game), UNC just pressured Flagler and Akinjo into 22% from 3 and 35% overall, just like teams will now start doing to Christian Anderson, Petty and Atwell. And defensively Toppin was as big a part of Tech's D as Jonathan was for us.
Tech may get lucky in its draw, but we didn't as we ended up with UNC, which was an awful matchup because they were a big team with Bacot dominating us with 16 rebounds and 15 points, Brady Manek (6'9") driving easily to the basket and RJ Davis filling it up from the outside. Flo ended up with 0 points and 5 rebounds.
I think McCasland is easily one of the best coaches in the conference so I know he won't go down without a fight. But I think it's gonna be a difficult fight after that first game.
