NCAA Basketball: 25 biggest offseason winners heading into 2021-22 season

The architect of Texas Tech’s rise to national stardom was head coach Chris Beard. But this offseason, he decided to go to rival Texas, dealing a massive blow to the Red Raiders program. They hired assistant and Texas Tech graduate Mark Adams as the new head coach but he had a lot of work to do rebuilding a roster after losing a bunch of players to either the portal or draft.

But after starting proverbially down 20 this offseason, the Big 12 program had a tremendous offseason overall. They were able to land a bunch of transfers in the first month, including guards Mylik Wilson, Adonis Arms, and Davion Warren, along with Florida State sharpshooter Sardaar Calhoun. And in the frontcourt, UTEP forward Bryson Williams joins Marcus Santos-Silva to give some real scoring production.

That was only bolstered with the pickup of Oral Roberts star forward Kevin Obanor, who averaged 18.7 ppg and 9.6 rpg last season and put up 25 ppg in the team’s Sweet 16 Cinderella run. He also was the only player in the country with a shooting split of 50/46/88 last season. His spacing works perfectly with Williams and Santos-Silva in the frontcourt.

And this was all capped off with the return of Terrence Shannon, the Red Raiders’ second-leading scorer at 12.9 ppg. He has tremendous potential and could be a national breakout star and if the mid-major transfer guards can hold their own in the Big 12, won’t take a step back next season. And compared to looking like a team that was going to finish near last in projections, shows how good an offseason this team had.