Tuesday’s Big 12 rivalry game between Texas and Texas Tech became a bit of a mess after the Red Raiders’ fans began throwing things on the floor.
After the Longhorns’ Brock Cunningham lowered his shoulder and rammed into Darrion Williams along the sideline, the teams pushed and shoved each other. And while the officials reviewed Cunningham’s foul, fans in Lubbock threw objects on the floor. They continued to do so until Tech head coach Grant McCasland took the microphone and told fans, “It’s gotta stop,” explaining that the Red Raiders would receive a technical foul with each additional object thrown.
The fans ultimately relented and allowed the game to finish its remaining 10 minutes, which ended in an 81-69 road victory for Texas. After the game, Longhorns head coach Rodney Terry commended McCasland for asking the fans to stop throwing things.
“Some coaches won’t do that,” Terry said. “He did that. Kudos to him. Proud of him. Proud of Coach Grant. He’s a man of a lot of character and a good man who’s done a great job coaching his team.”
Rodney Terry comments on Texas Tech incident
Terry said he had considered taking his team off of the court when fans continued to throw objects.
“I did say that to [referee] Kelly Self,” Terry said. “I said, Kelly, man, if they keep throwing things, because they’re throwing directly at our bench at this point, I said we’re going to go back in the locker room. I said I know we’ve got one technical foul. It should be a second technical foul, but if they keep throwing things at our guys, at the bench, then we’ve got to protect our guys and go inside.”
McCasland explained his thoughts on the scene that heavily delayed his team’s loss Tuesday, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
“We all know what’s at stake in this game,” McCasland said. “There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of passion in this game. When you have to go talk on the mic, you’re talking to 15-plus-thousand people, but really you’re talking to a couple of people that are doing things that are completely unacceptable. You could tell when I finally communicated clearly, like, this can’t happen, a lot of people were applauding because they know it’s not what we need to do. It cost us technicals, and it caused us a problem.”
With the win, Texas is now 7-8 in Big 12 play and 18-10 overall, while Texas Tech is 8-7 in the conference and 19-9 this season. Tuesday’s loss marked just Tech’s second home defeat this year.
More must-reads: