DALLAS — Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland woke up at approximately 5:30 a.m. California time so he could jump on with “The Morning Musers” of The Ticket in Dallas to talk about his Red Raiders’ upcoming Sweet 16 showdown with the Arkansas Razorbacks.

Here’s what he had to say as he broke things down with the crew.

What have what have you been pleased with the most about your team this year, especially down the stretch and here in these last two rounds of the NCAA tournament?

Well, George, you’ve seen our teams play in the past, and we started out this season in the summer, and we were playing one-on-one, and nobody could stop anybody. We literally scored every time. I thought, man, this is great. We can score, but this is going to be a long season. And when we got to the first part of the year, this team has scored the most points in 30 years of Tech basketball, and I knew we could score, but we’ve really improved defensively.

And in order to win on the road, especially in the Big 12, you got to have a good defense. And so the our team ended up with the most road wins in school history in the Big 12, we were 8-2, won at Houston, probably because I got thrown out and didn’t coach. And that ended up being their only loss in Big 12 play.

But you know, the biggest thing is we’ve got some fight to us. We’ve got some grit. Got a group of guys that love being around each other, that love to compete, and because of their love for basketball, they just keep getting better on the defensive end and rebounding. If we rebound, we’ve got a chance to score and transition, and that’s where we’re good.

We we made a bunch of threes. We’ve tied the record for the school’s most three pointers made in the game several times this year and it’s fun to watch these guys shoot, because I never could.

And you get Arkansas tonight in the Sweet 16, and it’s John Calipari, and what he’s done in his first year with the Hogs. What’s this like for you? Because you were in high school when he burst onto the scene at UMass, and he was taking them deep into the tournament. What’s it like going up against a legendary coach like that?

You know, it’s funny, because the part of this, I got to coach against him a couple times as an assistant, and we played at Kentucky one time, and we ended up getting a win, and we played them in a neutral site game, and then we lost to him in the Elite 8 game one time when they ended up going on with Anthony Davis to win the national championship. So, man, I’ve seen so many of his teams, and they win in really a way that I admire because of their belief. This team specifically has a lot of resilience, especially losing two of their best players early in the season, and so I’ll tell you what, I choose not to even look down there. I mean, I’ve had to coach against Scott Drew, he’s one of my best friends. We had to coach in the last round against Ben McCollum, and who’s one of my best friends. But thankfully, I’ve got one of my best friends and Jeff Linder sitting next to me, who helps me with the offense. And since we’ve had the most points scored in 30 years of Tech basketball, that really helps, because George, you know, we didn’t score a bunch of points at North Texas like this.

And I love your mantra about toughest team wins, and that certainly helped you at North Texas with some really good defensive teams. You mentioned Arkansas, they’re 17th and deficient defensive efficiency this. I guess this could be a real defensive battle tonight.

Yeah, that’s honestly, I believe it with all my heart. I mean, somebody asked me about it the other day, like, “Where’d you come up with it?” I’ll tell you what, when I was a junior college coach at 26 and Mark Adams was the head coach at Howard College in West Texas, in the WAC-JAC League, and one time we only had 13 points at the half, and I thought, I better learn how to coach some defense, because our offense isn’t working.

And we played Wisconsin in the NIT a few years ago, and we ended up holding them scoreless for the last 10 minutes of the game. And you know, he came up with a new thing, that we’d come into a timeout with about eight minutes left, and we’d be winning, we’d say we got enough points to win the game, which people don’t think that way.

But honestly, just getting your team to have that mentality, that when shots aren’t going in, you can still win. And I think that’s everything.

You know, when guys identify so much with the offensive end and basketball players do rightfully so, because they grow up thinking about how many points they can score, how well they play offensively, but when you can get your group to really believe that you can win when you don’t play well offensively, I think it’s the equalizer and ultimately, being able to win in those tough games. And this is no different.

Their team really is great defensively. Arkansas just has such great positional size and their length and athleticism, they can make up for mistakes by blocking shots, and it leads to transition offense, which they’re dynamic in, and they’re such a good driving team that the better they play defensively, the more it fuels how they compete on the offensive end.

So Arkansas pulled one of the few upsets in this tournament, but they’re also Arkansas, you know. That’s it’s not like they’re a tiny school or a real Cinderella, but they knocked off a two seed in St John’s. For the most part, this tournament has been very by the board, all the favorites are winning, and the big conferences are dominating. What do you make of that so far?

Well, kind of to your point. Arkansas was picked, I think, fourth in the SEC which is the best conference that’s had basketball in a long time, and best win percentage really competitively remarkable, and they had a couple all conference players.

I mean, we were picked in the middle of the pack in the Big 12 and didn’t have any preseason all conference guys. So, we know what the underdog story is really today.

But you know, it is a widened gap significantly because of NIL, and it’s undeniable when you look at how these conferences have stacked up all the teams, and how there is such a great separation in the resources. You know, when everybody used to be able to offer 13 scholarships, you could go into somebody’s home, and if somebody was going to cheat to get them, at least, you could tell them, you know, you’re on somewhat equal ground, even though facilities may not be the same, conference isn’t the same, for the most part, you felt like you could have some commonality.

At this point, there is no commonality. I mean, there’s such separation on in these programs, and I’m thankful to be a Red Raider, because we’ve got unbelievable facilities, one of the best universities in the world. We’ve got the best fans and basketball fans in the state of Texas, there’s no question about that.

But ultimately, we’ve got the resources and the people and the passion that can help separate us, and when you multiply that across the country in these major conferences, it just is eliminating any kind of real opportunity that I think some of the lower level schools have to compete in these tournaments.

All of those things you mentioned help you land a player like JT Toppin, Big 12 Player of the Year, has been terrific for you. You’ve coached a lot of great players through the years. What impresses you most about him?

He was at Faith Family in Dallas, and he was a role player in high school. He actually didn’t make his team when he first started playing. He started playing later as a young man, but his nose for the ball is elite. We were in one of the first practices.

Darrion Williams was an all-conference player last year for us, and he jumped over Darrion Williams’ back and then grabbed it and spun and dunked it with two hands. And Darrion looked at me, and I said, “Yeah, we’re gonna be good.”

So there was some early visuals that he was going to be that good. But what’s made him different? He’s got an unbelievable left-handed jump hook. He can make three-point shots.

But what separated him is he’s worked at a level, and he’s kind of got like this innocence to his work and his belief, because he’s always been more of a role player. I mean, even at New Mexico, he didn’t average double figures, and he had to get most of his opportunities on offense from offensive rebounds, and they didn’t run many plays for him.

So for us, we tried to make him more of a focal point, and what we discovered, and what we saw on film, was he’s an unbelievable and willing passer. And that goes back to, I think, his roots.

I mean, I just appreciate his humility, his work habits, and I believe his best days are ahead of him, which is scary in regards to the fact that he wasn’t even on anybody’s all-conference teams, but he ended up being Player of the Year in his first season with the Red Raiders.