Been Busy: Since I got back from Lubbock on Sunday afternoon, I've been busier than I want to be and haven't had time to write any recaps of the Spring Game. It's going to happen, just give me a little bit of time. I know, you expect more from me and trust me, I'd rather be writing.
Spring Game Breakdowns: I'll go ahead and admit that my assessment of the Spring Game isn't necessarily going to be spot-on, but there's more than a handful of items that I disagree with regarding RP.com's Stephen Johnson. He says this about the offensive line:
The offensive line was woeful at best on Saturday. Although they are still very young, it seemed to me the only time a big running play sprung was when a back, notably Crawford and Batch, made a dashing move to get to the next level. This line struggled early last season and I fear this coaching staff is going to find it hard to put five trustworthy guys that they can reasonably expect to get you that yard you need on 3rd and 1. Although LaAdrian Waddle had a couple of false starts, he was able to absolutely man handle anyone that was thrown his way. Beau Carpenter ran with the second team and didn’t seem to have any trouble protecting Karam. I’m going to go out on a limb and say Carpenter will start at least 3 games this year as your right tackle.
I'll say this, the last thing that I thought was that the offensive line was woeful. An adjective like "woeful" is reserved for an offensive line that couldn't keep it's quarterback upright and running backs getting stopped routinely in the backfield. That didn't happen on Saturday and I'm not sure where Johnson is going with this line of thought. Heaven forbid a running back cutting against the grain and making moves, we all know they should be able to run without being touched.
Johnson's assessment of Carpenter is correct in that he did hold his own, but there's no way in hell they let Carpenter start at right tackle this year unless there's more than a handful of injuries. Carpenter was good, but it would be foolish for the staff to remove his redshirt when there's enough depth in front of him to not need him for this next year.
Finally, Johnson says that he can't assess the defense because it was so vanilla. If this were true, then there would have been no assessment of the defense for the past 5 years or so. Bulsh.
ESPN's David Ubben recaps Texas Tech's Spring Game, but I think you've read most of this elsewhere.
Catching Lots of Passes: FWST's Dwain Price writes that head coach Tommy Tuberville said that he thought the receiving corps did a good job of catching the ball this spring:
"We have had no problems at all catching the ball this spring,'' Tuberville said. "I think all of our receivers have done a good job concentrating and catching the ball in a crowd and making plays, and (Saturday) was no exception.
"We have six guys that I think we can really count on.''
The receivers who caught at least three passes Saturday include Alex Torres (10-115, one TD), Cornelius Douglas (5-106, one TD), Tramain Swindall (5-54), Detron Lewis (5-18, one TD), Eric Ward (4-51, one TD), Harrison Jeffers (4-14), Lyle Leong (3-51), Jacoby Franks (3-41) and Aaron Crawford (3-31).
Dees Commits: I'll get the recruiting profile done later this week, but I did find a short article by AL.com's Josh Bean on commitment, LB Blake Dees. Here's Dees on why he made the decision to commit to Texas Tech:
"Knowing coach Willis from when he was at Alabama and Tuberville at Auburn, I saw how they run things," Dees said. "Coach Willis has been recruiting me for a while. That helped me make the decision to go there."
The 6-foot-1, 228-pound Dees recorded 110 tackles and returned a fumble for a touchdown last year for the Toros.
Neboh Seeing Lots of Time: I've essentially ignored CB Eugene Neboh as being much of a factor next year. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I completely ignored him in DTN's depth chart before the spring. I may want to tap the breaks a bit. Granted, it's a spring game, but Neboh led the team in tackles on Saturday and he was always running towards the pile. There's the thought that Neboh may only be a placeholder until the freshmen arrive this summer, but he has been talked about a bit by the coaches as an option in the secondary and maybe I shouldn't be so quick to write him off.
I started to think that I know nothing about Neboh and there's no recruiting profile for him, but I did find this video where Neboh was named to the Midland-Odessa area Dream Team (the reporter references Neboh being a "Nigerian nightmare" and his mother does talk with an accent, so perhaps this is one of those cases where Neboh had very little experience playing football, with only one season on varsity at Permian), a highlight video and a story on how Eugene and his brother Felix, played against each other in the Odessa vs. Permian game. If nothing else, I've saved you from about 10 minutes of work today.
Videos after the jump.