Texas Tech University Athletics
Media Session: NCAA Sweet 16
March 26, 2025 | Men's Basketball
SAN FRANCISCO – Only 16 teams in the nation remain. No. 3 Texas Tech, back in the Sweet 16 for the fourth time in seventh tournaments, is one of them. No. 10 Arkansas another. On Thursday, the Red Raiders and Razorbacks will battle at 7:10 p.m. (PDT) in a West Region semifinal at the Chase Center. That was the only focus on Wednesday as Tech remained focused on the next game on their schedule, going through prep work in the team hotel before making its way to the arena for the first time in the afternoon. They were met by an hour of media before the opportunity to practice. The March Madness court now has Sweet 16 and Elite 8 written around the midcourt logo. During the media portion, Darrion Williams, Chance McMillian, JT Toppin and head coach Grant McCasland climbed the stairs to the iconic dais to preview the game and spoke about the journey to this point, the strengths of the team that is now 27-8, and a matchup against Arkansas which advanced with wins over No. 6 Kansas and No. 2 St. John's. The message was clear. Enjoy the moment, but don't look too far ahead.
Below are excerpts from Texas Tech's press conferences.
McCasland on playing Arkansas in the Sweet 16: "What a fantastic opportunity for the Red Raiders to be in San Francisco and to be playing in the Sweet 16. Our guys are excited to be here and play a tremendous opponent in Arkansas. And I know Coach Cal has the Razorbacks playing great basketball and we know we'll have to play our best in order to put ourselves in position to win. The biggest thing is their team's improved with, if you ask me about anybody, I would say how resilient are you when things don't go your way. That's the biggest compliment I could give this team that Coach Cal -- seems like he always believes in them and gets them to believe in themselves and figure out a way as the identities change in these programs, with some players being available."
Williams on the NCAA Tournament: "One of the goals we talked about was at least getting past the first weekend because neither of us won a game in the tournament before. It's nice. But we didn't come here to make the Sweet 16. We came here to win it."
Toppin on playing Arkansas: "As we watched film, we see the guards have a good dribble pull-up and they're downhill guards. They like to shoot shots off the dribble. That's been an important focus for us."
McMillian on the team: "Our mindset didn't change at all from the start of the season. As we were going throughout the season, we realized we were a pretty tough team and everyone on our team can hoop. It's just a matter of who is going to step up on that given night. We're a dangerous team because we have all the pieces. We can shoot. We can play inside. And we're unselfish. That's really what makes us dangerous, we're unselfish."
Williams on playing Arkansas: "Just guarding the ball and rebounding and being more physical than them because they're obviously taller and longer than us, so just being able to guard the ball, I think, is the biggest thing."
McCasland on the NCAA Tournament: "How many times do you have a bracket, if you will, that a three-year-old can pick what's next? I mean, that's what makes this awesome is there's so many different ways to cross over picking a bracket, whether it be colors or mascots -- and I think that first-round interest and as it rolls into the tournament, you can see there's more identifiable teams that people across the America want to see them compete against each other. The one-and-done component that football's finally figuring it out and that basketball has had figured out for a long time, I think is the most beautiful part of tournament and competition that people love to pick and to see how it will turn out. It feels like sometimes in the early rounds, the less experience you have, the better you do. It's changing, though. College athletics is changing. That's changing, too. I'll be interested to see how it is moving forward, but what a great game, first and foremost. And secondly, there's nothing like a tournament where you have this many teams competing at one time for a national championship. There's nothing like it."
Toppin on the difference between last week's games and Thursday's: "Really the same mindset, just stay physical. It's going to be a physical game. The people who is more physical, I think, is going to come out with the win. Just really staying physical."
McCasland on McMillian: "I said this earlier in the year, he's remarkable. I mean that in every way. He has allowed us to coach him and to tell him the truth, but also to give him the path that we felt like gave him the best chance to be the best player and gave him the best chance to help our team win. He's embraced it. He's told me several times, after practices, during tough moments, like, Coach, keep coaching us hard. Like, stay on this team and I will not let you lose the locker room. I mean, he's in the 1 percent of players that really want that, that can say it and then live it. And one example of Chance just being an awesome teammate, we'll go into the gym and we get these shoot-around opportunities in new venues. He's the first guy that goes right to the block, does his form shooting and then works his way out and gets to the free-throw line on both ends. He's just got a real disciplined approach to his game. Some guys will go in the gym, shoot 3s from half court when they start. Everybody's got their own way. But Chance really does give himself and maximize who he is. And that I have such a tremendous amount of respect for. And he's taken the same approach as he's not playing. That's one thing about this difficulty that he's going through, I mean, he's preparing to play every game even if he can't. And at this point we're hopeful that he will play sooner rather than later. But it's honestly out of my hands, as you know. But I do believe we're getting close. And before it was hard for me to say. Now I honestly do think we're getting close. As to his availability, it's going to be a game-time decision. But he's been remarkably resilient and he's been as good as a guy on the bench as he was as a player, because of his belief in what we're doing. And every timeout I'm on people, and you've got plenty of clips of me jumping on guys, he's behind them telling them to hang in there because that's what we need. And that's what allows our team to win when he's not playing."
McCasland on his team and matchup against Arkansas: "We've said all along that we've got a great offensive team. We felt like our strength was our ability to shoot the basketball and the ability to score and the greatest areas of improvement would need to be our defense and our ability to rebound. Those areas, our guys have just believed that we can improve and get better, and that's been a consistent emphasis. And I think that's the thing I'm most thrilled about with this group, is that we've grown in those areas and we've improved. Then the thing about Arkansas is they've got a lot of talent. They've got a couple all-conference preseason guys. They've got guys that have projected to be NBA players and, man, they were picked fourth in the SEC going into the season. There's nobody denying that they have plenty of talent and just respect the fact that they can leverage you in so many ways. They can leverage your on the glass. They can block shots. They can defend. They can score in transition. They can make 3s. There's just a lot of different ways they can beat you, and to be able to fight them on every possession is going to be extremely important to give ourselves a chance to win."
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