Texas Tech Football
QB Situation Shakes Out: Per LAJ's Don Williams Red Raiders Football Notebook, it appears that Steven Sheffield has beaten Seth Doege for the second quarterback position. Sheffield on the competition and Doege:
"The battle was good," Sheffield said. "Doege’s a hell of a player. I have no doubt in my mind that he’ll be a starting quarterback here before he leaves. It just happened to go my way this fall and worked out for the best for me."
And Doege does not sound discouraged:
"I’m just going to keep working and we’ll see what happens," Doege said. "You can’t get discouraged. You have to keep working and keep getting better. That’s really all you can do."
Zouzalik Impresses: LAJ's Don Williams features redshirt freshman IR Austin Zouzalik who continues to be one of the most consistent performers in camp. Williams notes that Zouzalik has all but locked up the spot behind Detron Lewis and his position coach, Lincoln Riley, likes Zouzalik's game-changing potential:
"He’s consistent like an Eric or a Danny,’’ Riley said, "but he has more big-play potential. He has more speed than those guys had. He’s got a chance to do a little more with the ball. He’s actually got a little more size than they do, too. He can do the underneath stuff, but also give you another option deep. That kind of makes him a double threat.’’
And Zouzalik talks about those underneath routes where he's able to break for big yardage:
"The two routes I got a bunch of yards on today are some of my favorite routes,’’ Zouzalik said. "Those routes over the middle, just working the linebackers, I like those. It’s kind of a mismatch — a little inside receiver with speed and a big linebacker with strength. You can kind of work your way around them.’’
The Most Poorly Designed Website Ever: Big 12 Sports Wendell Barnhouse had a bit on Texas Tech. Now when you click that link, you'll note that it looks like it's about Colorado. You'll have to scroll down to read some of the notes on Texas Tech because there's no permanent URL for each entry. Being a guy that try to reads just about anything related to Texas Tech, I've decided that the Big 12 website is the absolute worst in the history of ever, especially if you want to try to add it to your feed reader (I use Google Reader). I'd love to add Wendell Barnhouse's Big 12 Insider blog to my reader, but trying to figure out the RSS feed is nearly impossible and to be completely honest, I had no idea Barnhouse even had a blog. I thought he was just hanging out until football season starts. I know, it's easy for me to criticize, but the Big 12 website is incredibly unfriendly and difficult to navigate. Someone spend some money to fix this if you want more readers.
Back to Barnhouse's notes, here's a couple of superbly difficult to find quotes:
Leach noted that Texas Tech was voted as the toughest place to play in the Big 12. "I view that like I view graduation rates - both need to be the highest in the nation."
Snip
Freshman running back Eric Stephens has been impressive thus far. In Monday's scrimmage, he scored on a 14-yard run that saw him break three tackles. His running has been so relentless that the practice jersey he had been wearing had to be replaced because it had ripped and been sewed too many times. "He's been able to step in and not take that whole lack of confidence (approach)," Leach said. "He goes out there, does what he can do, and then just learns more each day. I think he's played impressive."
Neglected Audio and Video: We have a couple this morning, including KAMC on LB Brian Duncan and Fox34 with a short story on the players knowing the season is just around the corner:
Big 12 and National Links: CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd previews the entire Big 12 . . . USAToday.com's Erick Smith has a very, and I mean very, small bit about Captain Leach . . .