Double-T Nation Daily Diatribe :: 03.26.10

Brown's Twitter Update:  Offensive coordinator Neal Brown has had a full day to look at film and has surmised that Wednesday's practice wasn't as bad as he thought:

After watching film we had a better day than initially thought.  Batch, Stephens, Fisher, Franks, Leong, Gallington, Edwards, & Emert had good days

I think the thing to pay attention to here is which names he doesn't mention.  I don't think he's mentioned anyone twice except for WR Jacoby Franks.

Weak & Strong, Well . . . It's All Pretty Weak:  I've said it once and I'll say it again, it's a tough job writing about an entire conference, especially as fans are more and more educated about their teams.  In today's day and age, I think it would be incredibly difficult to be as up to date and educated on every Big 12 team.  I've mentioned before that I've thought about writing a Big 12 blog, but ultimately, there's no way that I could spend the time to watch each and every game.  Not to mention, I'd get lambasted for being a homer, which is what invariably happens to any writer that tries to write a conference blog.  Tim Griffin is a good writer, graduated from Memphis (i.e. no Big 12 affiliation), and when he was writing for the San Antonio Express news, he is the only mainstream media writer that ever emailed me (he actually sent me a copy of the SAEN when he did a huge Michael Crabtree write-up) and linked to DTN.  On a personal level, Tim and I got along and I cannot say that about any other mainstream writer.  I do think that the ESPN blogs initially linked to other blogs, but over time, I think the higher-ups had no interest in linking out to anything except other mainstream media writers.

David Ubben is a Missouri grad that worked for the Daily Oklahoman, which means that he walks into this job with fans automatically thinking that he has a huge bias, and he might.  But before blasting guys doing their job, albeit with Ubben's latest attempt to assess the weak & strong of Texas Tech falls flat on it's face, I hope that we can all take a step back a bit.  I don't know if Ubben out-thought himself as the easy answer for the weak portion of the article is the defensive line.

I know, the one thing that's frustrating is that this national writer is misrepresenting what's actually weak and strong about Texas Tech, but this is why there are other outlets (like DTN, RRS or RP) where you can get accurate information.  It's easy to get worked up over national or conference writers, but the most emotion I can muster when almost anyone outside a very small circle of writers is me rolling my eyes and moving on. About the only time that I'll give any national writer much of a thought is when they interview a coach or a player.  There's typically little editorial content in those sorts of things.

Frenship Claims $10,000 Legal Fees:  This is awesome.  Per LAJ's Matthew McGowan, Frenship I.S.D. is claiming that due to Captain Leach and his legal team's request for discovery regarding the entry date of current head coach Tommy Tuberville's children and apparently a request for a bunch of other information (I understand that this discovery request was broad, as is most discovery requests) cost the school district over $10,000 in attorney fees. 

Backus said his firm spent "an incredible amount of time and effort" complying with the subpoena by pooling all these documents. It then spent hours more adhering to state open records laws by conducting a time-intensive, page-by-page review of the records to redact confidential information like private e-mail addresses for non-district employees.

Liggett said his office has received about 200 pages of documents.

Because of the sheer volume of FISD e-mail correspondence about Tuberville, Backus said, Leach’s team may review the remainder of them at his law firm’s office.

I want a job at that firm.

Ted Liggett says that the request for reimbursement is too much:

"I’ve never seen a non-party (not directly involved in the lawsuit) ask for costs in this manner," Liggett said. "They were contacted before Mike was fired, or they weren’t. That’s all we want to know."

The one thing that wasn't reported in this LAJ article, which was reported by the Daily Toreador, namely DT's Jon Vanderlaan, who wrote that the University's attorney said that the school district's records didn't have the information that Leach's attorneys were looking for:

Dicky Grigg, one of the Tech attorneys, said the Frenship request will not affect Tech’s case, but the records revealed showed no contact between the district and the Tuberville family.

Of course, the Leach attorneys may not feel that way, but at least there appears to be some thought that what they thought was there wasn't.

Vaderlaan also summarizes what the discovery request actually was:

The subpoena asked for documents about Tuberville and/or the Tuberville family; any communications between the school district and the Tuberville family; documents about interest in admission, potential admission and/or admission of members of the Tuberville family into Frenship ISD; and communications between Tech and Frenship ISD about any member of the Tuberville family.

I would think that if Liggett just wanted to know whether or not Tuberville had any contact with Frenship I.S.D. that he would have left off the part about any documents about Tuberville and/or the Tuberville family.  Complying with that must have been a pain in the arse.

Texas Tech (11-12, 1-2) vs. Texas (16-5, 2-1)
Location: Dan Law Field : Lubbock, TX
Radio: Affiliates

Outfield:
LF - Michael Reed (Sr.); CF - Taylor Ashby (Sr.); RF - Barrett Barnes (Fr.)
Infield:
SS - Joey Kenworthy (Sr.)     2ND - Jamodrick McGruder (Fr.);
3RD - Bo Altobelli (Fr.)                                  1ST - Jeremy Mayo (So.)
C - Kevin Whitehead (So.)
DH - Scott LeJeune (So.)

*Click on the score for boxscore. Texas Tech series preview (pdf).

Preview:  If you get the chance to watch this series, you should make it out to Dan Law Field this weekend as the Longhorns have some possibly elite MLB pitching, especially in Friday night's starter, Jungmann.  The weather should be nice today, but windy. 

LAJ's George Watson writes the Red Raiders know that the Longhorns will be strong to quite strong in the pitching department.  Here's CF Taylor Ashby:

"We know that we’ve hit good pitching in the past well, and we hope we can continue that pattern," centerfielder Taylor Ashby said. "We know they have a talented staff and we really have to be locked in and battle against them. There are a lot of expectations, and we need to get after their pitching."

And here's head coach Dan Spencer on the Longhorn pitching depth:

"Normally you can game plan for a starter and if you get to the Friday night guy, force the issue and try to get to the bullpen, and if you get to see the closer on a Friday then maybe you don’t seem him as often," Tech head coach Dan Spencer said. "With Texas, they’ve got a good Friday guy and plenty of guys in the pen who can get you out, and their closer … can go three innings or three times in a series. There’s just no dropoff drastically from one guy to the next, so you have to grind it out when you get the opportunity to score and minimize their damage on offense."

DT's Adam Coleman writes that the Red Raiders have a great opportunity this weekend, and 2B Joey Kenworthy thinks the Longhorns are just baseball players:

"They’re college baseball players just like we are," he said. "I see them just as others dudes on the baseball field. I don’t really get involved with the hype of ‘Oh the Longhorns this, Longhorns that.’ I really just don’t let that affect me. I just see them as — I’m just as good as that dude on the mound, so let’s go ahead and roll."

Killer Instinct:  LAJ's Courtney Linehan writes that it's all about defense with this team (despite being 68th in adjusted defensive efficiency, which was an improvement over 2009 where the team was 138th):

Between now and next season Knight expects the players to develop that "killer instinct." That kind of confidence and assertiveness would have helped in close losses against Wichita State, Texas A&M, Texas and, finally, Ole Miss.

There were signs of it in Brad Reese’ nine consecutive points during Tuesday’s second half, and it D’walyn Roberts’ ability to get 17 rebounds even though he said after the game his right foot is "not really close" to fully healed from the bone bruise he suffered in January and means he "can’t explode like I could before."

Half a year from now Tech will likely return with Reese, Roberts, and seven other players who watched the NIT semifinals slip away. Mike Singletary said they won’t forget how it ended.

"We just didn’t finish out the game," he said. "We had too many turnovers toward the end, and that really cost us."

I'm going to write a bit more about the basketball team after the football spring practice ends, but a short preview is this:  PK bet everything on the 2010-11 season, and if the team doesn't make it to the tournament next year, he knows he's gone and it sets up for the next coach to have seven scholarships available for said new coach to get his players.  If PK makes the tournament, I think the next year, 2011-12,  is going to be brutal if PK is the head coach.  If it's a new head coach, the pressure won't be as great to win because he'll be replacing seven players who will have played significant minutes.  The one thing that I am quite certain is that there is no way that AD Gerald Myers is the guy that fires Pat Knight.  I know that it shouldn't be this way, that being paid by anyone should be based on performance, but I know better.