NCAA Basketball: 10 best first-year head coaches through January of 2023-24 season

3. Grant McCasland – Texas Tech

Texas Tech has had enough coaching drama in the last 15 years alone to write several books, from Bob Knight to Billy Gillispie to Chris Beard to Mark Adams. Of course, Beard led the Red Raiders to the national title game in 2019 before bolting for Texas and causing other drama, but Adams faltered last season, getting fired after a disastrous 5-13 finish in Big 12 play. This left the Red Raiders from looking in a new direction yet again, but they’ve brought another winner to Lubbock.

McCasland was a point guard at Baylor before the turn of the century and has been a college coach in the state of Texas for more than twenty years. His career started as a director of operations here at Texas Tech before taking several head coaching positions. He aided Scott Drew at Baylor, did solid work at Midwestern State and Arkansas State before taking North Texas to 135 wins in six seasons, including a Tourney upset and NIT championship.

Clearly the ceiling is much higher at Texas Tech, but a 15-3 start certainly has the Red Raiders excited about the future. The losses have come away from home against solid power conference opponents, while the Red Raiders have impressive wins over Texas and BYU in conference play already. It’s the fact that Texas Tech is 4-1 against this very strong Big 12 that has excitement building; is this an indication of the future during McCasland’s tenure?