{"id":610498,"date":"2026-02-18T22:49:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T22:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/610498\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T22:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T22:49:14","slug":"texas-tech-basketball-star-jt-toppin-out-for-season-with-acl-tear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/610498\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Tech basketball star JT Toppin out for season with ACL tear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas Tech star forward JT Toppin suffered a season-ending knee injury in Tuesday\u2019s 72-67 road loss to Arizona State<\/a>, the university announced. An MRI confirmed a torn ACL in Toppin\u2019s right knee. The reigning Big 12 Player of the Year exited late in the second half of Tuesday\u2019s game after falling to the ground on a fast break, clutching his right leg. He had to be helped off the floor and was taken to the locker room soon after.<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-8 junior is the team\u2019s leading scorer and rebounder this season, averaging 21.8 points and 10.8 rebounds. He had 20 points and eight rebounds when he left the game against Arizona State, with his team down 61-56. It was Toppin\u2019s 15th 20-point game of the season.<\/p>\n

The No. 13 Red Raiders dropped to 19-7 overall and 9-4 in Big 12 play, falling to fifth in the league standings. Now, the far greater concern is how the team will fare without its best player for the remainder of a season that had national championship hopes, on the heels of last season\u2019s Elite Eight run.<\/p>\n

Toppin is in his second season with Texas Tech after transferring from New Mexico, where he won Mountain West Freshman of the Year in 2023-24. The Dallas native earned AP All-America second-team honors for the Red Raiders last season in a breakout campaign, averaging 18.2 points, 9.4 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game. He made headlines this past offseason when he passed on declaring for the NBA Draft and inked a $4 million deal to return to Tech, likely making Toppin one of the highest-earning players in college basketball this season.<\/p>\n

He lived up to it, leading Texas Tech to a top-15 ranking with wins over Duke, Houston and Arizona. The Athletic\u2019s latest Bracket Watch projected the Red Raiders as a No. 3 seed<\/a> in the NCAA Tournament \u2014 the same seed as last season\u2019s team, which reached the Elite Eight for the first time since 2019.<\/p>\n

The rest of the regular season slate is manageable for Tech, at least by Big 12 standards, with home games against Kansas State and Cincinnati followed by a tough roadtrip to No. 6 Iowa State, then back home against TCU and at No. 23 BYU to close out the regular season.<\/p>\n

A bigger onus will fall on sophomore point guard and second-leading scorer Christian Anderson, a potential first-round NBA Draft pick<\/a>. Toppin was the No. 65-ranked prospect on The Athletic\u2019s top-100 board<\/a> of NBA Draft prospects last month, though he does have another season of college eligibility remaining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Tech star forward JT Toppin suffered a season-ending knee injury in Tuesday\u2019s 72-67 road loss to Arizona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,354,6,12,1640],"class_list":{"0":"post-610498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-draft","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-mens-college-basketball","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-nba-draft","12":"tag-texas-tech-red-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}