Rodney Terry addresses preparation for raucous crowd at Texas Tech considering the intersecting story lines

Texas head coach Rodney Terry knows his team is set to face a rambunctious crowd next time out against Texas Tech. The rivalry between the two schools has been high for a few years now with its crescendoing last year with Chris Beard‘s departure from the Red Raiders to move to Austin.

Last year’s game in Lubbock featured a red-hot crowd, and that will likely be the case this year, too — even with Beard out as the Longhorns head coach.

Terry said after defeating West Virginia that they have a lot of respect for Texas Tech and will be prepared to face the Red Raiders.

“Well, win or lose, you have this game for one night and your on to the preparation for the next really good challenge and really good opponent in our league,” Terry said. “We’re going to play a team that’s well coached over at Texas Tech, a team that that’s won at a very high level. They’ve won in their building at a very high level. They gave us a really good game here at our place. A lot of respect for our opponent going into that contest. We’ll start our preparation tomorrow in terms of what we have to do gameplan wise but we expect a really good, tough ballgame over at their place.”

Texas Tech is currently at the bottom of the standings, tied with Oklahoma for a league-worst 2-10 conference record.

A win over the Red Raiders would put the Longhorns at 10-3 in conference play. They are currently No. 1 in the league ahead of two other teams at 8-4. Despite the lead, Terry said the team is not taking anyone or anything lightly.

“I don’t know about the driver’s seat,” Terry said. “This league is so competitive and there’s a lot of parody in our league in terms of every night you have to try to out compete a really good team, whether you be on the road or at home. I think you just have to control what you can control, and that’s 40 minutes of basketball against a really, really good opponent. For us, it’s on the road. We don’t ever try to get too high. We don’t get too low. We try to have an even keel. We respect to all of our opponents at an unbelievable level. We’ll come back in and we’ll just take it the next 40 minutes and take the next practice and in the next prep and just try to get better.”