Kentucky’s second exhibition game arrives Friday night with a pretty clear test attached to it: Texas Tech can shoot, Texas Tech can defend, and Texas Tech comes in ranked No. 19 in the AP Preseason Top 25.
The Red Raiders were a top-25 team for most of last season and finished third in the Big 12, and they looked like a group with second-weekend NCAA Tournament potential before JT Toppin’s season ended with a torn ACL in February. Toppin won’t play Friday, but his absence doesn’t erase the challenge Kentucky is about to face. He was putting up close to 22 points and more than 10 rebounds a night when he went down, and that kind of production is hard to replace.
Texas Tech’s roster still brings plenty to the floor, especially with a mix of returners and transfers who could matter right away. Donovan Atwell recently received an injunction that makes him eligible for this season, and he brings the kind of perimeter game that can tilt a matchup. He shot 46.3 percent from the field and 45.8 percent from 3-point range while also ranking second on the team with 40 steals.
The eligibility picture is still in motion for a couple other Red Raiders, too. Darrion Williams is back after a year at North Carolina State, returning to Texas Tech after averaging 15.1 points per game in 2024-25 for the Red Raiders’ Elite Eight team.
Jamichael Stillwell is also seeking eligibility after transferring from Central Florida this offseason. He has scored in double figures in both of his first two college seasons and logged a double-double as a freshman at Milwaukee.
Because exhibition lineups are so fluid this time of year, it’s tough to know exactly who will start or how the rotations will look when the teams take the floor at Rupp Arena. But there are several Texas Tech names worth keeping an eye on.
Josiah Moseley, a 6-foot-8 junior forward from Round Rock, Texas, spent his first college season at Villanova before moving on to Texas Tech. Most of his work comes inside the arc, with 45 of his 51 shot attempts coming there last season. He averaged 5.5 points and 3.6 rebounds per game.
Marial Akuentok is a 6-foot-11 sophomore forward from Edmonton, Alberta, who joined the program as a redshirt in the middle of the 2024-25 season. In his first full year with the Red Raiders, he averaged 1.1 points and 1.7 rebounds.
The backcourt brings more scoring punch. Damarion Dennis, a 6-foot-1 junior guard from Dallas by way of Wyoming, averaged 11.2 points last season and shot 52 percent from the field, along with 86.1 percent at the free-throw line.
Then there’s Cruz Davis, a 6-foot-3 fifth-year guard from Plano, Texas, who transferred in from Hofstra and has the look of a high-volume creator. He averaged 20.1 points, shot 44 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3-point range and 83 percent from the stripe, while adding 164 assists and 3.7 rebounds.
Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn, a 6-foot-1 senior guard from Lafayette, Indiana, arrives from UNLV with similar firepower. He averaged 20.7 points per game, shot 49.7 percent overall and 41.4 percent from deep, and also posted 89 assists and 52 steals for the Runnin’ Rebels.
At the center of it all is Grant McCasland, now in his fourth season at Texas Tech and 11th overall as a head coach. He has built a reputation for tough, consistent teams, guiding North Texas to the 2023 NIT Championship and leading Texas Tech to the Elite Eight in 2025. In McCasland’s first three seasons in Lubbock, the Red Raiders finished no lower than tied for third in the Big 12.
His track record goes back well before that. Before taking over Texas Tech in 2023 after the difficult ending to Chris Beard’s tenure, McCasland spent six years at North Texas. He took the Mean Green to the 2021 NCAA Tournament and a first-round win over No. 4 seed Purdue, then followed that with two seasons in which his teams led the nation in scoring defense, holding opponents to 55.7 points per game in both 2022 and 2023.
Texas Tech’s shooting is the other big part of this matchup. The Red Raiders made 384 3-pointers last season, a new program record and one of the top marks in the country. That kind of perimeter volume could push Kentucky to fire away, too.
Mark Pope said he wants the Wildcats to attempt 35 3-pointers per game, and Friday could be the first time this season that number starts to show up.
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The upside is obvious, but so is the challenge that comes with handing the controls to someone adjusting to a bigger stage and a new system. Pope has made it clear Wilkins is still developing, even as his potential stands out, and Kentuckys early buzz around him reflects the balance the Wildcats are trying to strike this season. If the guard keeps building on what he has shown so far, he could give Pope exactly the kind of dynamic backcourt presence this team needs. [Read more 🡒]
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The concern is on the other side of the ball, where Kentucky wants to keep heating up quarterbacks even as it navigates life without a key edge rusher. The defense has still been built to create pressure and help the Wildcats stay in the playoff conversation, but the margin gets thinner when one of the main pass-rush pieces is missing. If Kentucky is going to keep its place at the top of the SEC, it will need more than just a favorable matchup. It will need a cleaner, more complete performance than the one it has shown at times so far. [Read more 🡒]
Kentucky Fans Keep Asking About One Frustrating Wildcats Trend
A string of recent injury issues has naturally become one of the biggest talking points around Kentucky mens basketball, especially for fans trying to separate coincidence from something more troubling. The case being made here is that a lot of those setbacks look more like bad luck than a conditioning problem, which matters because the Wildcats are trying to build momentum with a roster that needs continuity as much as anything else.
There is also the broader frustration of where Kentucky landed in the preseason SEC basketball conversation. A seventh-place projection feels too low for a program that expects to be in the league chase, and it only adds to the sense that the Wildcats are entering the season with questions around health and respect alike. The injury chatter may not tell the whole story, but it has become part of why so many fans are paying attention to every update. [Read more 🡒]