Double-T Nation News:
Post-Mortem to be published later this morning, probably around 10:00 a.m.
DTN's Top Four:
- RIP Don Haskins.
- Awesome as always, Chris at Smart Football on why spiking the ball isn't a good idea.
- Great American Beer Festival.
- Pretty neat series from the NY Times college sports blog, The Quad, on Friday Night Lights.
Texas Tech Football:
The LAJ's feature is on the Texas Tech defense and that there's still more work to do and Daniel Charbonnet acknowledges that there's still more work to do:
"The offense came through when it mattered and the defense really stood up," safety Daniel Charbonnet said after No. 12 Tech’s 35-19 victory at Nevada. "We’ve still got a lot of work to do, though. We allowed them some big plays. We’re not going to be able to let those go when it comes to conference play in the next few weeks. We’ve still got to improve a lot."
Ruffin McNeill also acknowledges that the defense yielded too many yards, but he was proud of the group:
"Golly. Not good. That’s too many yards," McNeill said. "The win overrides all that. But we have to make sure to do a better job on that."Snip
"I tell you what, I’m proud of the guys," McNeill said. "We talked to them about being a tough group, improving in that this week, and also making sure that when adversity hits to be ready to handle it.
"I talked last week about playing the next play. If something bad happens, don’t worry about it. They’re going to make some plays on you, but you have to be resilient and just keep working, keep fighting and play the next play."
It's nice to see the defense acknowledge what we're all talking about, that there were times where the defense really stood up, but gave up too many yards.
Also of note, the LAJ with an article about how the Wolf Pack were able to do what they needed to do, but just didn't get the "W".
DMN's Chuck Carlton wonders if things have really changed, with the defense being the 95th ranked thus far and Carlton says that really we've got more of the same Texas Tech as in year's past. I'm going to address this more specifically in the Post-Mortem later this morning, but the difference between this year and last year is that in year's past, Texas Tech would have lost a road game where the quarterback completes less than 50% of his passes and the head coach makes regrettable decisions that put the defense in a bad position. This year, do appear to be different.
There's a review of the Texas Tech / Nevada game from the Reno Gazette-Journal and you should read the comments. Everything from the referees being in Texas Tech's back pocket (if they only knew how much we despised the ref, John Bible) and it appears the consensus is that the loss is on the shoulders of their head coach, Chris Ault.