Watts erupted for a career-high, then fueled a Duke upset, earning national player honors after a historic week.
The spotlight didn't just find Texas Tech men's basketball again; it practically moved into Lubbock and started paying rent.
After a week that flipped the national conversation around the Red Raiders, the program walked away with the kind of hardware that doesn't show up for nice wins or empty stats. It shows up when you knock down the door.
Texas Tech's LeJuan Watts was named the Lute Olson National Player of the Week after powering the No. 15 Red Raiders through a defining two-win stretch that included an 82-81 upset of No. 3 Duke at Madison Square Garden.
The award is a loud national stamp of approval for a team that's now 9-3 and looking far less like just a solid Big 12 squad and a lot more like a problem for the rest of the country.
Watts had the kind of week that makes box scores look fake.
Across two games, the junior forward averaged 28.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 2.0 steals, turning every possession into a warning label for opponents. It started with a historic eruption against Northern Colorado and a career-high 36 points on 12-of-13 shooting.
Watts opened by drilling his first 12 shots and missed only a late three, posting a stat line so efficient it rewrote Big 12 trivia. He became the first player in league history to score 35-lus points while shooting better than 90 percent in a single game.
Then he followed it up by making Duke feel the heat.
Watts dropped 20 points with six rebounds, three assists, and three steals, despite fouling out with 11 minutes left in regulation. And that's the part that should scare people. Even with his minutes cut short, he still left fingerprints all over one of the biggest wins of the college basketball season.
Watts' rise isn't random, either.
He's a first-year Texas Tech player with a body of work that reads like a cross-country tour of production, starting at Eastern Washington (where he earned Big Sky Freshman of the Year honors), then moving to Washington State, and arriving in Lubbock already proven.
He brought double-doubles, a triple-double, and a steady reputation for doing more than scoring. He also brought lineage. His late father, Walter Watts, starred at Utah and helped push the Utes to the 1991 Sweet 16.
Now, under Grant McCasland, LeJuan Watts is turning that pedigree into presence and national awards into notice. Texas Tech hosts Winthrop on Sunday at 1 p.m. CT on TNT, but the message is already out. The Red Raiders aren't just hot, they’re legit.