Breaking down No. 6 Texas Tech vs. No. 11 N.C. State

No. 6 Texas Tech vs. No. 11 N.C. State

9:40 p.m. Thursday, PPG Paints Arena

TV: CBS

Winner plays: Winner of 3-Kentucky (23-9)/14-Oakland (23-11) Saturday in second round

Series history: N.C. State leads 2-1

Texas Tech (23-10)

Coach: Grant McCasland (1st season)

How they got here: Texas Tech earned an at-large bid out of the Big 12

Last NCAA appearance: 2022, lost in the Sweet 16

Leading scorer: Pop Isaacs, so., G, 15.9 ppg

Probable starting lineup

No., Player, Ht., Pos., Cl., PPG

2, Pop Isaacs, 6-2, G, so., 15.9

5, Darrion Williams, 6-6, F, so., 11.4

6, Joe Toussaint, 6-0, G, gr., 12.1

24, Kerwin Walton, 6-5, G, sr., 8.4

25, Robert Jennings, 6-7, F, so., 4.4

Notable: Texas Tech is in the NCAA Tournament for the 20th time and is 19-20 all-time. The Red Raiders have qualified in six of the past eight seasons. Texas Tech was the 2019 NCAA runner-up. It advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2022. … Ranked No. 22 in the latest AP poll, the Red Raiders finished 11-7 in the Big 12, good for third place. They lost to Houston, 82-59, in the Big 12 semifinals. … Texas Tech surpassed 20 wins for the 17th time in program history. … Williams, Isaacs and Toussaint earned postseason All-Big 12 honors. Toussaint, Lamar Washington and Chance McMillian all have surpassed 1,000 career points. Devan Cambridge suffered a season-ending knee injury in the eighth game of the season when averaging 10.5 points and 4.5 rebounds. … McCasland is in his first season and is the 19th coach in Texas Tech history.

Quotable: “For us, I think it’s just the tenacity and grit that we play with. We’ve had a lot of games that we came down big, and we kept clawing and fighting back to get into it. We play for each other. That’s like one of our biggest strengths is just us being able to claw out of anything, and I think that’s going to take us very far in this tournament.”

—Texas Tech guard Kerwin Walton on his teammates

NC. State (22-14)

Coach: Kevin Keatts (7th season)

How they got here: N.C. State earned an automatic bid after winning the ACC Tournament

Last NCAA appearance: 2023, lost in first round to Creighton

Leading scorer: DJ Horne, sr., G, 16.9 ppg

Probable starting lineup

No., Player, Ht., Pos., Cl., PPG

0, DJ Horne, 6-2, G, gr., 16.9

12, Michael O’Connell, 6-2, G, gr., 5.7

14, Casey Morsell, 6-3, G, gr., 11.5

23, Mohawmed Diarra, 6-10, F, jr., 6.0

30, DJ Burns Jr., 6-9, F, gr., 12.4

Notable: N.C. State is making its 29th appearance in the NCAA Tournament. The Wolfpack have an all-time record of 37-26. They are 2-0 in NCAA games at PPG Paints Arena, beating LSU and Villanova as the No. 8 seed in 2015 to reach the Sweet 16. That victory over Villanova was N.C. State’s most recent NCAA Tournament win. … N.C. State went 9-11 in the ACC, but won five straight games last week to win its 11th ACC Tournament championship. … Burns was named ACC Tournament MVP after he scored 20 points in the championship game win over North Carolina. Burns Jr. pulled in 60 rebounds during the tournament’s five games, surpassing Tim Duncan’s tournament record (56) set in 1996. Horne was a third-team All-ACC selection and picked to the all-tournament first team. He scored 29 points in the championship game. O’Connell, who graduated from Stanford with a degree in economics, averages 3.0 assists. … Keatts has a record of 135-93 in seven seasons at N.C. State and is 207-121 for his career.

Quotable: “I think this group is different because we can do it in different ways. We have the ability to score inside. We have the ability for those guards to really play well. You know, on any given night one of these guys can lead us in scoring. It happened at least four times in the ACC Tournament. Last year was a really good team. Our team was really good. But we had to go as Terquavion Smith and Jarkel Joiner went. And if those two guys didn’t play well, we wasn’t going to win. We can have games now where one of our best players might not have their greatest game but somebody else can lead us.”

—Texas Tech coach Kevin Keatts on his team