MINNEAPOLIS -- A horde of reporters poured into Texas Tech's locker room for media availability, one by one crowding the space where Avery Benson was supposed to be.
To the left of Benson's assigned locker sat Matt Mooney, a graduate transfer without whom the Red Raiders would not have reached Saturday's Final Four. It was Mooney who drew all of this attention, not the redshirt freshman with the Arkansas drawl who, without as much of a word, parked himself in a vacant locker adjacent to the Pac-Man arcade machine provided by the NCAA to the teams meeting in the national semifinals.