King Leaves Team: LAJ's Don Williams reports that redshirt freshman offensive lineman Joe King was suspended for the bowl game and has left the team, although this short story states that King is open to returning at some point. Seems a bit strange to be suspended, leave the team, and then I assume both sides are open to King returning.
Recruiting Link: If you are really into recruiting but prefer not to pay for any of the services, I ran across ESPN's Southwest Recruiting Blog by Gerry Hamilton that had some Texas Tech information in it. If you didn't want to subscribe or bookmark the entire blog, here's the link to when Hamilton tags Texas Tech. It's free for now, but like all things in life, it will probably go behind a paywall at some point.
Texas Tech Links: TR's dedfischer with a Baylor Post-Mortem . . . RRS.com's Joe Yeager has season grades for each position . . .
Bowl Links: To supplement the jwhitettu's FanPost, per SBNation, there are now 8 Michigan St. football players suspended for the bowl, which includes 3 starters (I wonder if this would have an effect on which team a bowl committee chooses) . . . LAJ's Don Williams writes that the Alamo Bowl is a strong possibility, which has a couple of gems worth mentioning, including one of the Alamo Bowl's head honchos having this to say about Texas Tech:
"They’re one of the best traveling schools we’ve ever invited,’’ said Rick Hill, the Alamo Bowl vice president of marketing. "They brought record numbers, and had one of the best ESPN walking-off-the-field quotes from Mike Leach: ‘We’re not playing worth a damn,’ and just kept walking.’’
. . . and Captain Mike Leach already discussing that he will be very available for a press conference (he apparently is typically in New York on that day) on the selection day:
"A lot of times I’m on the plane, but I’ll try," he said. "Heck, I’ll fly to San Antone, do press conferences, hand-shaking, make coffee, the whole deal. Whatever they want me to do. I’m very giving."
. . . SI's Stewart Mandell with updated bowl projections and still has Texas Tech in the Alamo Bowl . . . SAEN's Jerry Briggs writes about the good and bad of the Alamo Bowl candidates . . .
Red Raider vs. Husky Showdown: Later this morning, I've scheduled the weekly Pulse of the Team as the Red Raiders look forward to a much more difficult December. Scheduled for tomorrow, I've already finished a preview for Thursday's game against the Washington Huskies and would encourage you guys to check out UW Dawg Pound to catch up on the No. 14 ranked Washington Huskies.
Pre-Conference Recognition: DT's Mike Graham writes that the Red Raiders are proud thus far, but realize that Thursday's game should tell a lot about this year's squad:
"I wasn’t even aware (of the polls)," Roberson said. "I mean it’s too early to tell. We haven’t really played top-notch competition yet as far as I’m concerned. I think this game on Thursday will be a good game for us to see where we’re at and what we need to work on."
SF Mike Singletary has similar thoughts:
"Right now we’re riding pretty high at 7-0," Singletary said. "To beat a Top 10 team is going to be huge for us and to beat two Pac-10 teams, not many teams can say that."
Romar Transcript: Seattle Times' Percy Allen has a transcript from UW head coach Lorenzo Romar's press conference and there's lots of good info, but here's a snippet:
(What lessons did you learn from the Montana game?) "We have to be able to play different ways and still be effective. We shot 30 percent and still were able to come back from a 12-point deficit in the second half and win. I think we can draw from that later that we were down in a tough situation when things weren't going right and were able to pull out a victory. I think Isaiah Thomas and Quincy Pondexter getting 13 and 7 points respectively were lessons for us. If our big guns aren't necessarily scoring a lot, we still can have a chance to win the game. Those are just all lessons for us that are going to prove to be crucial later in this season. Maybe later on in this month. Maybe Thursday."