Double-T Nation News:
In no particular order, DTN's Top Seven:
- Rock Chalk Talk handicaps the first round of the Big 12 Tournament.
- BON's Big 12 Helmet Schedule. Good stuff.
- Corn Nation's weekly look at the Big 12 baseball statistics.
- Guy Morris is coaching horses, not football teams (hat-tip to EDSBS).
- Da Wiz with further Bowden scholarship nastiness (which Texas Tech may have it's own issue - see below).
- Ken Pomeroy previews the Big 12 Tournament.
- Courtside View's Steve Walentik with his All-Big 12 selections (Steve and I had the same ballot).
Texas Tech Basketball:
Articles from the LAJ: Jeff Walker preview's Texas Tech's matchup with Oklahoma State and writes about the friendship between Pat Knight and Sean Sutton. I enjoyed the last article so go read the whole thing.
Perhaps the most surprising news is that PK and Texas Tech have signed a 6-9/245 forward from Serbia, via Seward County (Kan.) Community College in Darko Cohadarevic. What's surprising about this is that this means someone who is on the team now isn't going to get a scholarship next year. Cohadarevic averaged 15.088 points per game, shot 49.260% from the field, 73.630% from the line, 36.800% from beyond the 3-point line, and 8.176 boards a game.
I found Cohadarevic's profile at Seward CC as well as a couple of YouTube videos of Cohadarevic (video 1, video 2 [I think 1 and 2 are the same video], and video 3 which is about 9 minutes of a Seward game.).
Articles from the DMN: Chip Brown has a nice article on Pat Knight and the changes he's made at Texas Tech from Robert Knight's tenure. Perhaps the biggest difference is his understanding of players today:
"I think you can really get on your guys four times a year," Pat Knight said. "If you're yelling at them all the time, it starts to go in one ear and out the other. When my dad was coaching me at Indiana, we had 13 tough kids. He could get on all of us, and we could take it.
"But parents don't spank their kids anymore. They put their kids in time-out. Kids are more fragile mentally. So you have to be careful about how much you get on them."
I know that some of you may disagree, that there should have been a coaching search after this year ended, but I don't know that you could have done much better than Pat Knight. As I look around the league, the guys that I would want coaching Texas Tech are few (Barnes, Self, and maybe Capel because he recruits so well). Yes, we could have gotten some guy who's had mid-major success, or perhaps Myers would have hired one of RMK's previous assistants, but I think I'd still rather have PK because of his youth, relative experience, and I think he evaluates the players differently than RMK.
Chip Brown also previews the first round of the Big 12 Tournament games and names the DMN's All-Big 12 Teams. I usually don't take offense to this, but I just don't get Brown's justification for naming Augustin as POY for the Big 12 over Beasely. Brown's rational was that Augustin led his team and there's no doubt that Augustin is a fabulous player who did lead his team, a much more talented team, but Beasley leads a less talented team to the brink of an NCAA birth. I'd say that Beasley had the tougher task. One other thing, how can the DMN name Byron Eaton on the 2nd team All-Big 12? That makes me want to throw up.