Mark Adams Spoke Loudly at Big 12 Media Days
This 2022-23 basketball team is similar to the recent rosters from Texas Tech in some ways, yet it's almost entirely different from years past. Sure, there are a lot of new faces. That's become commonplace in Lubbock during the last few tenures and the nature of college basketball today. Generally, Texas Tech has filled its roster with grad transfers and players with experience.
This year, they added three veterans to the roster, but will also be utilizing five freshmen and a sophomore who didn't play in Big 12 play after transferring at the semester from the Longhorns to Texas Tech.
In 2019-20 the Red Raiders had seven freshmen and went 9-9 in Big 12 play, but it took Jahmi'us Ramsey leading the team in scoring and earning Big 12 Freshman of the year. Could one of the young guys do that for this team? I don't know that this roster will depend on their freshman as much as that one had to, but you could see Pop Isaacs or Elijah Fisher contribute early as true freshmen.
Or any of the others on the roster.
Adams, Kevin Obanor, Fardaws Aimaq, and De'Vion Harmon to Big 12 Media Days, and the quotes were interesting, even if they were just a part of the mostly useless media day scenario.
Let's look at a few of them.
First, Adams believes this team can score from the perimeter better than last year's team and will be a better ball-handling team than the 2021-22 team. Translation: They have real and actual point guards and not forwards being forced into the role of the point guard.
We saw it in the offseason with the boxing montage of the team working out in a boxing gym. I had the chance to talk to Fardaws Aimaq before he decided to come to Lubbock and he mentioned that Adams was his choice as his coach because he wanted to learn how to play defense.
Adams searches and recruits guys that want to play hard. He doesn't have to force it when they get here.
Obanor has been a part of a lot of teams as a super-senior. He says this is his favorite team so far. He also had some great quotes about Adams and some insight on why he returned for a final season.
Mixed into all of the coach speak was also some really high praise for Daniel Batcho, which has been coming from nearly every direction this offseason. By all accounts, the dude is an absolute monster in practice and is ready for an elevated role.