KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Along with the expansion of March Madness, college basketball teams this year had the ability to schedule up to 32 games during the regular season.
While the Texas Tech basketball team has 32 games accounted for on the 2026-27 slate, the Red Raiders may wind up short of that goal.
Texas Tech is one of 16 teams in this year's Players Era Sixteen event taking place in Las Vegas the week of Thanksgiving, which features two separate eight-team tournaments going on simultaneously. In one of these brackets, Grant McCasland's team opens play Nov. 24 against Louisville, then plays either Oregon or St. John's on Nov. 26.
The next day (Nov. 27) will see the Red Raiders facing one of Tennessee, Maryland, San Diego State, or Iowa State to
close out bracket play of Players Era.
The winner of each of these two mini-tournaments will meet in the Players Era championship game, which Tech currently has on its schedule. However, just two of the 16 teams will advance that far. The others will be left without that fourth game in Vegas, leaving those squads with an unfulfilled date.
McCasland told the Avalanche-Journal during Big 12 media days that Texas Tech tried to account for this wrinkle, but complexities made it hard to find an alternative solution.
"Originally we were trying to figure out how we could make a conditional game pending that result of the Players Era game," McCasland said, "but at this point, we've just decided we're going to play however the result of Players Era is and that'll be it. We won't play the additional (game)."
McCasland said in order to have that conditional game, Texas Tech would need to buy out somebody else from a team playing at home, then agree to a date to play the 32nd game in Lubbock, and the other team that gets bought out would wind up with 31 games instead of 32.
Other teams involved in Players Era, such as Iowa State and Maryland, face the issue, so Texas Tech considered the possibility of trying to schedule a fourth game amongst those non-title game teams while still in Las Vegas. That, too, required a lot of moving pieces to fall into place.
"I think people are deciding if you're playing either 32 or 31," McCasland said. "I don't know anybody that's playing each other pending the result. We thought about it, but never proceeded with any discussion."
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: There's a wrinkle to Texas Tech basketball's 2026-27 schedule it can't avoid
