A few years ago, we asked whether someone would fill the power vacuum left by Texas and Oklahoma in the New Big 12.
1. JT Toppin did not change the sport of basketball.
From Sam Vecenie’s latest Mock Draft, written before JT Toppin announced he’s returning to Lubbock:
“J.T. Toppin won Big 12 Player of the Year this year at Texas Tech and is likely to make in excess of $1 million in college basketball next season…I haven’t gotten the impression that teams currently have a grade on him that is commensurate with anywhere near that salary in the NBA.”
Toppin’s return’s brought out some big headlines. JT Toppin spurns NBA Draft, will return to Texas Tech for purported $4 million in NIL earnings next year, reads one from CBS. To be clear: Yes, that’s a lot of money. To be clear: Yes, that’s more than JT Toppin would make in the NBA next year. To be clear: No, JT Toppin didn’t just change the game.
Players do stay in college longer because of NIL opportunities. That’s something that happens. Whether the alternative is a pro career or something other than sports, many players are putting it off in exchange for a little cash to keep playing basketball. Toppin’s getting a lot of cash, but he fits this category better than he fits the hypothetical Caleb Williams/hypothetical Cooper Flagg category, the one where it would really shock the system if they maximized their time in college. JT Toppin will be noticed in college basketball next year. His absence won’t be noticed in the NBA.
2. Texas Tech might be the Big 12’s new king.
Texas Tech doesn’t have the stature of Texas or Texas A&M. This is especially true in football, the sport which contributes to power the most. But Texas Tech does have size, and Texas Tech does have money, and while Lubbock is inconveniently located, it doesn’t hurt a college athletics program to be based in Texas.
The Red Raiders drove a lot of news this January with their football transfer portal haul. Now, they’re shelling out four million dollars for a year of JT Toppin on the hardwood. Is it happening? Is Texas Tech ascending to the throne?
Maybe so. But the problem for Texas Tech is that to really push the league around like Texas and Oklahoma did, the winning needs to happen in football—where it’s harder to win—and it needs to happen over a sustained period of time. Texas Tech’s basketball program can be as good as Houston’s. It won’t place them atop the power structure alone. If Texas Tech really is going to run this conference, it needs to win a lot of football games, and it needs to start winning them now.
(Most likely, the Big 12 is too big and too middle-class to get a real ruler. Maybe Tech can pull it off. Maybe BYU can. Most likely, it’ll stay what it is: A feeding frenzy of good–not–great football teams and the basketball teams who, though better, play second fiddle on their own campuses.)
3. Lennie Acuff is a good coach. Lipscomb should be fine without him.
Lipscomb’s athletic department is a great story, and we’re hoping to tell you more of that story on an episode of Free Hoops later this spring. (If you’re reading this, you know who you are, and we haven’t forgotten your offer!) The short version is that they just keep hiring good coaches. In basketball, the latest of those good coaches was Lennie Acuff.
Acuff left Lipscomb yesterday to take the same job as Samford. It’s not exactly a lateral move—the SoCon’s stronger than the ASUN—but it’s not a demonstrable step up. Credit to Acuff and his predecessor, Casey Alexander, for that. It should be a bigger step up. The fact it isn’t speaks to the work those guys did.
So, good hire by Samford. Acuff should do well there, just as he did well at Alabama-Huntsville and just as he did well up in Nashville at Lipscomb. How well did he do? We don’t have the numbers for D-II jobs, but using our head coach scores (how much better or worse each coach has done, per kenpom, than his predecessors and successors), Acuff stacks up as follows among notable head coaches on the move this year:
| Coach | Score | D-I Years |
| Ben McCollum | 0.67 | 1 |
| Ross Hodge | 0.62 | 2 |
| Will Wade | 0.49 | 11 |
| Bryan Hodgson | 0.45 | 2 |
| Phil Martelli Jr. | 0.40 | 2 |
| Darian DeVries | 0.40 | 7 |
| Mike Magpayo | 0.38 | 5 |
| Buzz Williams | 0.35 | 18 |
| Bucky McMillan | 0.32 | 5 |
| Ryan Odom | 0.32 | 9 |
| Fran McCaffery | 0.26 | 24 |
| Kevin Willard | 0.18 | 18 |
| Lennie Acuff | 0.12 | 6 |
| Niko Medved | 0.09 | 12 |
| Richard Pitino | 0.07 | 13 |
| Josh Pastner | -0.22 | 14 |
| Sean Miller | -0.72 | 20 |
Two things to remember here: First, Niko Medved is a good coach. Second, coaches get hired because they were good coaches somewhere else.
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Your comments about Texas Tech are a little self-contradictory. True, they don’t have the stature of Texas or (to a lesser extent) Texas A&M. But is it really because of their lack of winning in football when neither Texas or Texas A&M won all that much during their time in the Big 12? A&M did win a Big 12 title back in the 90s when they were on again/off again NCAA probation for recruiting infractions, but Tech beat them half the time if not more, and many of those were ugly blowouts. Now Texas did have a significant upper hand in the head to head series with Tech, but aside from a couple of big years were mostly mediocre during their stay in the league. They certainly weren’t good enough to say it caused them to have more stature than Texas Tech.
The truth of the matter is that both Texas and A&M have had more stature than Tech because they’ve had more money, much of that coming from state handouts from the Permanent University Fund which gifts Texas billions of dollars and A&M a lesser amount. But because the PUF doesn’t provide any of it’s billions of dollars to Tech it’s left the state of Texas with two flagship universities instead of three, four, or more like the California system. If the state of Texas would invest in Tech like it has Texas and Texas A&M it would have three high profile flagships instead of two.
With that said, it appears that Tech has decided to take the bull by the horns and do for itself what the state of Texas so far hasn’t: invest in itself and mobilize it’s largest donors to take advantage of the current loopholes in NCAA Division IA NIL funding. Very few other mid-tier Division universities have done as much with less as Texas Tech, and now that they are beginning to have more it appears to be inevitable that they’ll be the next Big 12 heavyweight. If roster talent and facilities are the measures, Tech has already risen to the heavyweight level.
Fair points! I didn’t mean to imply that a lack of winning was what got Tech to its position in the state. What I meant (and did not make clear) was that winning is the thing that could get them out of that position. Basically: A lack of winning isn’t the original problem. But winning would be the best solution.
I haven’t forgotten. I’m still ready to be interviewed.