Suit Proceeds: The LAJ and the DT both have further reports from yesterday's court rulings as the judge essentially decided that Leach was not entitled to an expedited discovery, that both parties must preserve all documents related to Leach's termination, that the judge is not quite ready to rule on the sovereign immunity issue, that the parties will provide the judge a timeline on Monday and that the judge has questions about six of the seven causes of action presented by Leach, which are, per the DT:
The causes of action for the lawsuit are breach of contract, defamation, fraud in the inducement, negligent misrepresentation, Texas Whistleblower Act, Constitutional due course of law violation, Constitutional taking and one issue the judge does not have as many questions about — waiver of sovereign immunity.
I have no idea where this goes from here, but it appears things are progressing and I wonder if the University will be more inclined to make an offer the longer that the judge allows discovery and depositions of all of the parties.
First Conference Win: I didn't get to watch most of the game, I had some family obligations, but it appears that the two of the three big juniors stepped up their play, PG John Roberson and SF Mike Singletary, and led the Red Raiders to a 78-71 win over the Iowa St. Cyclones (boxscore). I don't know if I'll get out any post-game thoughts this morning, but at the very least, this team got a win they desperately needed.
DT's Mike Graham and LAJ's Courtney Linehan have their game recaps. Head coach Pat Knight had this to say regarding last night's win:
"(Texas coach) Rick Barnes has a great quote," Knight said after the win. "He always says, ‘Proud as a peacock one day, a feather duster the next.’ It gets a little out of hand, you get hatemail, people wanting you fired, people saying your players aren’t any good. I just felt good for the players."
And PG John Roberson said that the guards were trying to help out against the talented Iowa St. big men:
"We had to help on the big guys, so they were getting a lot of open looks," Roberson said. "They were knocking them down, and on our end we were just making shots."
The DT has an excellent video recap:
Additional Recruiting Information: Doing my normal Google search this morning, I ran across an article from AthlonSports' Braden Gall regarding how head coach Tommy Tuberville has made a number of personal visits with most of the recruits, but that there are still a number of undecided commitments:
Tommy Tuberville may have the most work to do considering the stark difference in styles between himself and his predecessor. Linebacker Fred Harvey and defensive back Tre’Vante Porter have decommitted while big name recruits Scotty Young (QB) and Jackson Richards (DE) both seem impressed with the new regime. A large group of recruits — Kadron Boone, Javius Townsend, Denton Simek, James Polk, Kedrick Dial and Urell Johnson — are still committed but are still considering other options. It appears Tuberville has done a great job with the ones he has visited thus far so if he and his staff and can get to everyone, they could keep what is a really solid class intact.
That's a lot of undecided and I hope that these personal visits will help keep guys on board.
Grading the Coaching Hires, Part II: Dr. Saturday's Matt Hinton is grading the coaching hires (SI's Stewart Mandel gave the Tuberville hire a solid B, but gave Kansas' hire of Turner Gill an A) and Hinton agrees with Mandel in that the Tuberville hire was a solid B:
Texas Tech: Tommy Tuberville
There was never any doubt that Tuberville, still relatively young (55) and coming off a solid 85-40 run at Auburn, was going to get back into the game at some point. His wealth of experience and relatively steady hand will be a relief to a Tech program still reeling from Mike Leach's acrimonious exit, but it remains to be seen just how much he intends to maintain the Leachian wide-open passing attack that came to symbolize the Red Raiders to the rest of the nation. Publicly, Tubs has vowed to continue the "Air Raid" tradition that put Tech on the map, even going so far as to add a spread-happy offensive coordinator from Troy to the staff. But we remember how that worked out for him last time. Grade: B