Matt Mooney will play crucial role in Texas Tech's first Final Four game

MINNEAPOLIS — Matt Mooney took a required boxing class in his lone year at the Air Force Academy.

Students had to fight four or five times. Those who failed to win one, failed the class.

Mooney went 4-1, his lone loss to his best friend, Ryan Manning. Mooney had won their previous two bouts. He is still sore about that last one.

But it wasn’t until Mooney’s lone basketball season at Texas Tech that he found out how tough he really could be.

Mooney was a hotshot guard at South Dakota for two seasons, scoring 30 points or more in a game five times. When coach Craig Smith departed for Utah State, Mooney took a long look around and decided his final year would be best spent with the Red Raiders, who needed to replace graduated point guard Keenan Evans from a team that reached the Elite Eight.

Mooney arrived in Lubbock with a cyst on the wrist of his shooting hand. He felt he needed to impress his new teammates, but how?

“I’m new here and I’m trying to prove that I can play and it’s like, ‘Man, I can’t shoot,’” Mooney recalled Thursday, sitting at his locker at U.S. Bank Stadium preparing for the Final Four. “So I’ve got to impact the game in another way, with my passing and my defense.”

Defense?

It turns out that’s precisely the path to playing time at Texas Tech. And Mooney said he’s surprised even himself with how effective he can be at that end of the court.

Mooney can still shoot. He averages 11 points on 38.1 percent accuracy from the 3-point arc.

But he can get after it as well, with 12 of his 67 steals coming in Texas Tech’s four NCAA tournament wins.

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Mooney said his ability to defend might have remained untapped if he hadn’t become a Red Raider, embracing what it takes to get minutes for third-year coach Chris Beard.

“This place has really challenged me, and you can’t play here if you don’t guard,” he said.

Mooney prepared himself by training with one of his childhood heroes. Kirk Hinrich was a guard on Mooney’s hometown Chicago Bulls who is now retired in South Dakota with his wife and children. The two connected for offseason workouts twice a week.

Hinrich imparted this message to the 6-foot-3, 200-pound Mooney: “When you’re guarding somebody, you’ve just got to have the mindset like ‘I’m not letting this dude score on me.’ And that’s one-on-one defense. But it’s just a competition vs. the guy that you’re guarding.”

Mooney considers himself the ultimate competitor. In fifth grade, his father, Michael, forbade him from shooting 3-pointers. He didn’t want his son out there hoisting up wild shots, instead concentrating on developing proper shooting form closer to the basket.

“I still shot 3s, though,” Mooney said. “Because I was making them, he couldn’t say anything.”

Mooney brought that never-back-down attitude to Texas Tech. He immediately tested himself against the team’s star, 6-6 forward Jarrett Culver. Culver told reporters Thursday that Mooney is the toughest defender he’s faced. Mooney laughed, saying that’s not the message Culver tells him when they’re at home.

But he didn’t deny the truth in Culver’s statement.

Mooney is about to get the test of his life when he faces Michigan State all-American Cassius Winston in Saturday’s semifinal.

Beard left no doubt this week that Mooney has made him a believer. Maybe he’ll make Winston a believer as well.

“He's a self-made player,” Beard said of Mooney. “He outworks people, and he loves the game. … I'd just do anything to be able to coach this guy two more games.”

Follow the Des Moines Register's Mark Emmert on Twitter @MarkEmmert.