NCAA Tournament: 2019 Final Four favorites from each seed line (8-1)
By Chris Kern
Three Seed: Texas Tech
You may notice that this is the fourth team from the West Region. This region is absolutely loaded with good teams from top to bottom. The Texas Tech Red Raiders are as good as any and they’re capable of making a Final Four run.
The way they defend is elite and very few teams make an impact on the defensive end of the floor like they do. People will question their ability on the offensive end of the floor but they won their final nine Big 12 regular season games to earn a share of the title.
They did lose in the Big 12 Tournament to West Virginia so it’s hard to 100% trust them but based off how they’ve improved throughout the season I would say it’s more of a fluke. They’re led by Big 12 Player of the Year Jarrett Culver who is one of the most underrated players in the country.
This team is much more than just Culver though. He is their main guy but they have at least a few other guys who can help offensively mainly Davide Moretti, Matt Mooney, and Tariq Owens. Mooney and Owens are both graduate transfers and they have fit in perfectly with Chris Beard’s system.
They start off their run in Tulsa against the Northern Kentucky Norse. Drew McDonald is a very skilled player so they will need to make sure they keep him in check if they want to advance. That would very possibly set up a matchup with the Buffalo Bulls. They are mentioned earlier in this article as the six seed most likely to make a Final Four run. They’re extremely dangerous and the winner of this potential matchup may be my pick to win this region.
A sweet 16 matchup would likely be against the Michigan Wolverines but Florida and Nevada are possible opponents as well. Michigan is a team that plays similar to how Texas Tech plays as they both have a defensive minded team. It would be an exciting defensive matchup between two teams who still do have players who can get buckets.
Then in the Elite Eight, it’s possible they would face another team that I already mentioned in this article. The most likely opponent is the top-seeded Gonzaga Bulldogs but Syracuse and Florida State both easily could be the opponent. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is, if Texas Tech wants to even advance to the second weekend in the NCAA Tournament they will need to play better than they did against West Virginia in the Big 12 Tournament.