College hoops analyst says Grant McCasland should be national Coach of the Year

There is no doubt that Texas Tech head coach Grant McCasland has done a fantastic job in 2024-25. In fact, one college basketball analyst believes he should be the national Coach of the Year.

Robbie Hummel, a former college basketball star at Purdue and a current college basketball analyst, recently said on the “Goodman and Hummel” podcast with Jeff Goodman that he would give the Werner Ladder Naismith College Coach of the Year Award to the second-year Red Raider head man.

“I’ll go with Grant McCasland,” Hummel said. “I think he’s done a great job in Lubbock. And especially the fact that they are a team that can score. We knew that his teams could defend at North Texas, but the fact that he’s got the No. 9 offense in college basketball, that’s pretty impressive. I’m going to go with McCasland.”

Hummel makes an interesting point about the evolution of McCasland since he arrived in Lubbock. As head coach of North Texas from 2017 to 2023, he coached a very deliberate offensive style designed to keep games low-scoring because he knew that he didn’t have the offensive firepower to out-gun teams on a consistent basis. That approach has evolved in the Hub City.

McCasland has completely changed his style of play while at Texas Tech

In his six years at UNT, McCasland’s teams never ranked higher than 157th nationally in points per game, and their average ranking in that statistic was 239.1. During that time, the most his teams ever scored per game in one season was 74.4 points in 2017-18, his first year on the job.

After that, UNT averaged 69.8 points, 71.1 points, 69.8 points, 65.1 points, and 64.5 points per game in his last five seasons with the Mean Green. That was by design, and it worked as McCasland went 135-65 in Denton, taking that program to the NCAA Tournament in 2021 and the NIT in 2022 and 2023 (he won that event in 2023 before taking the job at Texas Tech).

So when McCasland arrived in West Texas, there was a segment of the Texas Tech fandom that rightfully questioned whether or not he could produce teams that could put the ball in the basket at a high enough rate to compete in the Big 12. Fortunately, that has not been an issue in his two seasons as a Red Raider.

This year, Tech finds itself averaging 80.6 points per game, which is tied for 37th-best in America. So why did Hummel say that Texas Tech has the ninth-best offense in the country? He was likely going off of the KenPom.com adjusted offensive efficiency metric that measures the number of points a team averages per 100 possessions. That metric takes pace of play out of the equation, whereas points per game can be impacted by playing opponents who try to slow the game as McCasland’s North Texas teams did.

In the KenPom.com rankings, Tech is ninth in America on offense. The Red Raiders average 124.3 points per 100 possessions, which is good for second in the Big 12 behind Houston, which is at 124.4 points per 100 possessions.

Now, McCasland hasn’t suddenly become an offensive guru. His roots still lie in playing defense and rebounding the ball.

However, he’s recruited standout shooters like Chance McMillian and Christian Anderson and paired them with excellent offensive-minded assistant coaches such as Jeff Linder this year and let them do what they do best. The results have been spectacular as Tech has one of the most balanced teams in the nation, given that the Red Raiders are in the top 30 in the KenPom.com adjusted defensive efficiency rating.

Hummel’s observation about McCasland’s evolution as a head coach is astute. He knew he couldn’t win big at the highest levels of the game if his teams weren’t able to score more efficiently, so he sought out great players and coaches to help him field more balanced teams on both ends of the floor.

As a result, the Red Raiders are one of the best teams in America this season. And, according to Hummel, McCasland deserves to be honored as the game’s best coach.