Texas Tech has built one of the best basketball teams in the nation this season. Grant McCasland’s group looks like it could potentially contend for a national championship after navigating a very difficult Big 12 slate with relative ease.
A massive reason why Texas Tech has been so good this season and is in contention to fight for the sport’s biggest trophies has been the excellence of star big man JT Toppin. Toppin is one of the top candidates for the Big 12 Player of the Year award, and he showed why once again on Wednesday night in a dominant 91-75 win over Colorado.
Toppin finished with 30 points and 14 rebounds on 10-for-17 shooting against the Buffaloes. He controlled the paint all night and dominated a Colorado front line that has struggled with some of the top big men in the conference all season.
By night’s end, Toppin became the third Big 12 player ever to record three 30-point, 10-rebound games in conference play in a single season, joining Kevin Durant of Texas and Michael Beasley of Kansas State, per Jared Berson.
Toppin doesn’t do his damage in the same way that Durant and Beasley did, though he did knock down both of his 3-point attempts on Wednesday night in his final home game of the season. However, any time you can be mentioned in the same breath as two of the greatest individual seasons in the history of the conference, it is a major feather in your cap.
Toppin’s individual numbers this season warrant Player of the Year consideration as he leads the second-best team in the Big 12. So far in 2024-25, the New Mexico transfer is averaging 17.3 points and nine rebounds per game while patrolling the paint defensively for Texas Tech.
A win over a Colorado team that has been near the bottom of the Big 12 all season long won’t much to boost Texas Tech’s NCAA Tournament resume, but it keeps it on the right track heading into the postseason.
The Red Raiders seem poised to secure a possible No. 2 or 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament, likely ending a big run in Kansas City in the conference tournament to bump up into the two-line. Regardless of where McCasland and company end up in the bracket, nobody will want to see this Texas Tech basketball team in the Big Dance.
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