Grant McCasland and Scott Drew still talk most of the time – Jerome Tang too.

Fittingly, as the architect of Baylor men’s basketball who brought the three together initially, Drew is the primary one who still keeps things connected between his old assistants-turned-conference rivals.

“Coach (Drew) is the guy that holds all this together,” McCasland said after Texas Tech's 79-73 loss to Baylor. “That's the truth and he's always putting us in group texts and if you don't respond, you feel bad about it.”

Tuesday night was McCasland’s first regular season game against his alma mater and former mentor since taking over at Texas Tech. It was technically McCasland’s second time playing Baylor when he was the head coach at Midwestern State during the 2010-11 season in an exhibition.

But even after Tech’s third consecutive loss, the longest skid of his brief tenure in Lubbock thus far, a visibly dejected and fatigued McCasland couldn’t help but flash a smirk when he recalled earlier in the week how Drew graciously extended an invitation to his former mentee to stay at his house while he was battling illness all weekend. He even offered to get him a Z-Pak antibiotic.

“I'm like, no coach. I don't want to do that,” McCasland laughed. “It just shows you what he cares about.”

McCasland’s a product of Baylor. He coached alongside Drew for four seasons and his oldest daughter, Amaris, now attends Baylor. Even as Drew’s moved on to a new bench of potential future head coaches in Alvin Brooks III and John Jakus, he was still quick to point the spotlight back on his most prominent former assistants – McCasland and Tang.

“It’s never easy playing family and Coach McCasland helped make Foster Pavilion possible with all his hard work and what he contributed to Baylor Basketball and, like Coach Tang, I’m sure there’s a lot of pride with what we have here at Foster because of what they helped pour into that.”

While the master bested the pupil in their first regular season clash, it didn’t come without a scare. After Baylor pulled ahead 72-57 with 3:30 to play, Tech rallied back with a barrage of 3-pointers from Chance McMillan and Darrion Williams cut the lead to five with under a minute to go. Baylor held on in the end.

“One thing about (McCasland’s) teams are always going to fight to the end and they're never going to give you anything,” Drew said.

Tech was without key big man Warren Washington who was announced as out just prior to tip-off. KyeRon Lindsay and Eemeli Yalaho earned minutes in his stead.

“I’m actually proud of them to be honest man, they got thrown in fire,” Tech guard Joe Toussaint said. “They didn't know Warren wasn’t gonna play and we had to mentally prepare them like right before the game started but I'm content with it.”

With the win Baylor moves into second place tied with Iowa State while Tech falls to fifth at 5-4 tied with TCU. But more notably, Drew earned his first Big 12 win vs a former assistant. He's 0-3 against Tang and now 1-0 against McCasland. 

“This is a really competitive job,” Drew said. “It's hard to play family but at the same time, I know we wouldn't be where we're at without his contributions here and I'm always cheering for him and Coach Tang as long as we're not playing them.”