Basketball season opens on Monday against Northwestern State for Texas Tech, where the Red Raiders will start a three-game home stand before heading to Maui for the Maui Jim Invitational.

Head coach Mark Adams spoke to the media ahead of Monday’s matchup and didn’t sound satisfied with where his team is at as the season nears.

“Our players excited, they're tired of playing against each other, the staff’s excited. Everyone’s excited except me. I want about another three weeks of practice,” Adams said. “I want to see us not beat ourselves, not make too many mistakes. We want to play hard and give ourselves a chance to win.”

The Demons went under wholesale changes in their program last season and Adams spoke about the struggles of preparing for that and what he is expecting from Northwestern State on Monday.

“They’ve got a new coach and a lot of new players, so we’re going into that game kind of uncertain on what they are going to do,” Adams said. “They've got a lot of transfers, three-point shooters, things that scare me as a defensive coach. They’ve got a 7’3”, 310-pound guy that we’re concerned about because we've not played against someone that big in a while.”

Adams spoke about the rotation that he is planning to deploy in the early stages of the season, one where the Red Raiders are full of depth.

“We’ve got 11 healthy players and we feel good about all of them stepping in and giving quality minutes,” Adams said. “We may be playing a little more small ball than we thought.”

Without Fardaws Aimaq, center Daniel Batcho will carry quite a bit of the load for the Red Raiders at the position and Adams spoke about the sophomore and how many minutes he is expected to provide.

“We like to play our best players around 30 minutes,” Adams said. “The way we like to play with the intensity and the physicalness and aggressiveness. It's tough to play those quality minutes.”

Adams also gave an update on Aimaq, reiterating his original timeline of the beginning of conference play, despite conflicting reports earlier in the week.

“He’s still in a cast,” Adams said. “We’re still hoping he’ll be back at the first of conference play, the first of January. He’s still out for another six weeks.”

With a new offense implemented and lots of new guys on the floor, Adams spoke about what he believes the biggest difference between this season and last season will be.

“I think it'll be on offense. I mean, I think we'll have that same consistency defensively,” Adams said. “We already had a couple of scrimmages, and the defense has not been our problem. It's just our guys learning to play with each other and for the coaching staff to try to figure out what each player does well, and then get him in those spots.”

Adams also spoke about the new offense, implemented by Steve Green, and the differences that he thinks it will bring to his team.

“You’re going to see us attack more, we’re going to get the ball out of a made basket and push it up the floor,” Adams said. “Hopefully you'll see a team that spacings better and will move and the ball way sharper than we did last year.”