Best friends Ben McCollum of Drake, Grant McCasland of Texas Tech square off for spot in Sweet 16

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WICHITA, Kan. — The coaching fraternity is much closer than most people realize. Friendships are formed and relationships kept through all the hirings and firings, and paths cross and cross again as coaches climb and fall on the professional ladder.

Every once in a while, they cross on a stage so big that everybody notices.

So it will be, when Grant McCasland leads third-seeded Texas Tech against Ben McCollum and his team full of Division II transfers from No. 11 seed Drake. At stake for the best friends: a spot in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

“It’s just like playing pick-up with your teammates,” McCollum said after beating No. 6 seed Missouri in the first round. “When you’re playing pick-up, sometimes you kind of get after each other a little bit, but afterwards it’s all love.”

The 48-year-old McCasland certainly is no stranger to facing familiar faces. The Red Raiders play Big 12 games against his alma mater, Baylor, where he spent five years on the staff of longtime coach Scott Drew. And they regularly play Kansas State, which is coached by Jerome Tang, who was on that staff in Waco, Texas, at the same time.

Yet his friendship with the 43-year-old McCollum goes back even farther, way back to their very origins in coaching.

It was the early 2000s and McCasland had just been hired for his first real job, as an assistant at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado, where the pay was so modest he felt fortunate to live in the dorms. It was there that McCasland came across Jeff Linder, an assistant at Emporia State, a Division II school in Kansas, who was recruiting some of his guys.

Linder, by the way, is now an assistant on McCasland’s staff at Texas Tech.

So fast-forward a couple of years and McCasland gets his first head-coaching job at Midland, a junior college in Texas. One of his first calls was to Linder, who joined his staff, and together they went to the national tournament their first…

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Source link : https://www.nbcsports.com/mens-college-basketball/news/best-friends-ben-mccollum-of-drake-grant-mccasland-of-texas-tech-square-off-for-spot-in-sweet-16

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Publish date : 2025-03-21 19:17:00

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