Joey McGuire: Texas Tech feels 'really good' about recruiting

Now in his second season at Texas Tech, Joey McGuire has already proven to be an excellent recruiter for the Red Raiders, and he’s feeling good about how Texas Tech has been doing on the recruiting trail.

While at Big 12 media days, McGuire praised Texas Tech’s 2023 class and the players who are verbally committed for the 2024 cycle.

“You know, we feel really good,” Joey McGuire said. “We signed the fastest class in the nation last year. That’s not a feel-good statement. You can look it up in black and white. We’re really excited about the class we brought in.”

According to the On3 Industry Rankings, Texas Tech had the 29th-ranked class in the country, landing four four-star recruits. Right now, the 2023 class is ranked 23rd. Compare that to the classes in the 40s or lower before McGuire’s staff had the chance to recruit a full cycle.

“Then we feel good about the guys that are with us right now that we have committed. We’re in a lot of battles, and that’s constant until December when everybody signs.”

Joey McGuire benefits from his background as a high school coach in the state of Texas. Later, he was an assistant coach at Baylor.

“I was lucky enough to work with two great coaches in Matt Rhule and Dave Aranda. They had such a good game plan for recruiting, and so I learned from two really good ones. We put our own spin on it, but we still are heavy high school recruiters.”

Notably, Joey McGuire mainly recruits from the high school ranks in Texas. However, that doesn’t mean that Texas Tech isn’t using the transfer portal too. That’s become an excellent source of talent for the Red Raiders as they try and build a team to compete in the Big 12.

“The transfer portal for us is more of a gap, filling gaps. We only took six guys this year because we want to build recruiting at the high school level,” McGuire said. “But again, I was lucky enough to be with those guys. Since I brought one up, I got to text him yesterday, but it says a lot about Dave Aranda, number one, being here and representing the university yesterday after his dad passing away. But definitely Texas Tech, our coaching staff, because we have so many people that worked for Coach Aranda, our thoughts and our prayers are with him and his family as they go through this difficult situation.”

Joey McGuire says everything runs through Lubbock

During Big 12 media days, Joey McGuire doubled down on his saying that everything runs through Lubbock.

“I love that question for so many reasons. For one reason because Pat Clancy is here and he is our storyteller for Texas Tech. I told him after that, I said, ‘some things are just for the locker room and some things are for everybody.’ He looked at me and he said, ‘I’m sorry, Coach.’ And I said, ‘You know what, Pat? There’s nothing that comes out of my mouth that I don’t truly 100% believe. So maybe that was for the locker room, but I still believe it,” McGuire said.

“I think that’s such a powerful word, and whenever you have that in a locker room, you can do some incredible things. So I think our players do believe that. I do think in 2024 there’s an opportunity for some teams to take a huge step in this conference. It’s going to start this year with what we do, but whenever you have an administration and an alumni base that is behind a university like they are at Texas Tech, you do have that opportunity.”