Red Raiders to Open Against Iowa in Las Vegas

LUBBOCK, Texas – Texas Tech will play Iowa at 7 p.m. (CST) on Thursday, Nov. 28 at the 19th annual Continental Tire Las Vegas Invitational at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. It will mark the 14th year the invitational has been played at Orleans Arena and is a matchup of a pair of NCAA Tournament teams from last season between the Hawkeyes and Red Raiders.

Tech will play either Creighton or San Diego State on Friday, Nov. 29 to conclude the Championship round before the Red Raiders travel to Chicago to play DePaul on Wednesday, Dec. 4 and then New York to face Louisville in the Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden. FS1 will present coverage of four 2019 Continental Tire Las Vegas Invitational games played at Orleans Arena, televising two games on Thursday, Nov. 28, and the championship and consolation games on Friday, Nov. 29.

Texas Tech, which will play five games before traveling to Las Vegas, advanced to the NCAA National Championship final in 2019 where it finished as the national runner-up after an overtime loss to Virginia in the title game. The Red Raiders finished the season with a 31-7 overall record, including going 14-4 in conference play to win the program’s first Big 12 Conference regular-season championship. Tech head coach Chris Beard was named the Associated Press National Coach of the Year and was named the Big 12 Coach of the Year for the second straight season after leading the Red Raiders to the historic season.

The Red Raiders open the season on Tuesday, Nov. 5 against Eastern Illinois at the United Supermarkets Arena. The campus portion of the Continental Tire Classic will have Tech host Tennessee State on Nov. 21 and Long Island on Sunday, Nov. 24 before taking on the Hawkeyes at the Orleans Arena.

Iowa won 23 games this past season and earned the program’s 26th NCAA Tournament appearance under head coach Fran McCaffery. The 23 wins are its second highest total in 13 years and most under McCaffery for an NCAA Tournament team. Iowa, who was nationally-ranked for 16 straight weeks this past season, graduates one senior from its roster.

On the heels of its 19th season of 20+ wins in the last 21 seasons, Creighton men’s basketball is slated to return 92 percent of its scoring, 89 percent of its rebounding and 98 percent of its starts to the floor in 2019-20.

San Diego State returns six of its top nine scorers off a team that went 21-13 and advanced to the championship game of the Mountain West Conference tournament in 2019.

Always one of the top early season tournaments of the college basketball season, the past champions of the Continental Tire Las Vegas Invitational reads like a “Who’s Who” of college basketball: Illinois (2005), Kansas (2006 and 2010), North Carolina (2007), Kentucky (2008) and Oklahoma State (2009). In the 2011 title game, UNLV upset #1 North Carolina 90-80. Creighton (2012), UCLA (2013), Illinois (2014), West Virginia (2015) Butler University (2016) Arizona State University (2017) and 2018 Champion Michigan State.

Each team will play four games in the Invitational – the first two at on-campus sites and the final two rounds at the Orleans Arena November 28-29. Hosting more than 200 events each year, Orleans Arena is located just west of the Las Vegas strip and was recently named the #1 mid-size arena in the USA by Venues Today magazine.

Tickets for the final rounds in Las Vegas are available at the Orleans Arena box office via the internet at www.orleansarena.com.