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No, Texas Tech basketball wasn't trying to add an NBA player to the roster
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- No, Texas Tech basketball wasn't trying to add an NBA player to the roster
Late Saturday night, an online report from On3's Joe Tipton said that the Texas Tech basketball team was among the handful of programs in pursuit of current Chicago Bulls two-way player Trentyn Flowers.
Flowers has spent the last two-plus season in the G-League and currently plays for both the Windy City Bulls and Chicago Bulls. Formerly a commit to Louisville for the 2024 recruiting class, Flowers instead opted to reclassify and hit the pros rather than attend college.
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According to Tipton's initial report, Flowers was "drawing interest" from Texas Tech as well as Kentucky, Michigan, Florida and a host of others. Tipton sent another tweet 11 hours later saying Texas Tech was "not expected to be in the mix" for Flowers.
Grant McCasland, though, denies ever being involved with Flowers' recruiting process.
"Everybody's fishing for something," McCasland said. "And if they call you and say, would you be interested? And one of our assistants picks up the phone, all of a sudden you have interest."
Flowers is not the first pro venturing back to college. Just last week, Baylor a nnounced the signing of James Nnaji, who was taken 31st overall in the 2023 NBA Draft. Nnaji has not appeared in an NBA game or the G League, which made him eligible to join the Bears as a mid-year enrollee.
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Nnaji's arrival at Baylor has sparked much outrage from folks across the sport and college landscape, calling the NCAA's lack of eligibility limits a joke. Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo had some choice words for the situation as well.
This is the latest in the recruiting buzz, and Baylor is not the first to utilize this new loophole. Santa Clara added former G League player Thierry Darlan in September. Darlan is averaging 5.9 points and 3.8 rebounds for the Broncos.
A small number of Texas Tech fans on social media have wondered by the Red Raiders don't try something like that with their host of injuries. McCasland, though, said adding Flowers was never in consideration.
"It's comedy, unfortunately," McCasland said, "and you know, there's other programs in the Big 12 that are taking players at semester. We're just not in a position where that's what we're going to do.
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"So if you see somebody's name out there that we're recruiting, we're not, I'll just put it that way. We love our team. We love where we're at and we're going to try to figure out, do our best to get these guys healthy so we can make a run in conference play and put our best foot forward and keep getting better."
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: McCasland denies Texas Tech basketball recruiting NBA two-way player
