Good Times: I mentioned this on Monday morning when I got back, but a big shout-out to everyone that was at RaiderDoc's tailgate. I met a ton of people and it was great to put faces with names. And I'm not sure how many more games I'm going to be able to make this year, but I will say that if you get to go, you learn a lot from a lot of different people.
Need Improvement: From yesterday's press conference (audio from official Big 12 site) head coach Tommy Tuberville started off his comments by stating that the run game, on offense and defense, need improvement. You can listen to the whole press conference at the link above. LAJ's Don Williams has selected questions and answers while DMN's Mike Graham has five things from the press conference. LAJ's Don Williams writes about how Tuberville thought the effort was good, but need to correct mistakes:
"We probably hit on, as I told the team, four out of eight cylinders all the time," Tuberville said during his weekly luncheon at Jones AT&T Stadium Stadium. "You’d have eight guys do something good and three guys make mistakes. The effort was good."
Tuberville also said that OC Neal Brown limited the offense against SMU:
"We didn’t run a lot of our offense," Tuberville said. "We were pretty basic, pretty vanilla. We wanted to be fundamentally sound in what we did in just a few plays. We will continue to add as we go, which will help."
And Tuberville talks about needing to be better running the ball and stopping the run:
"We can’t give up that much rushing yards with a team that throws the ball as much as SMU," he said. "We’ve got to play the run a lot better. We’ve got to get off blocks. We were out of alignment sometimes on formation, basically just gave them the run. It wasn’t anything to do with physically, but we do have to play fundamentals on stopping the run."
POTG | Potts, Davis and Douglas: LAJ's Don Williams writes that QB Taylor Potts, S Cody Davis and WR Cornelius Douglas were Tuberville's players of the game yesterday. Tuberville also had a shout-out to the scout team players of the week: LB Jonathan Brydon and QB Jacob Karam. I thought Duncan was outstanding, but Davis did the job that ILB Bront Bird should have done in filling the gaps in stopping the run.
Brown Wanted 4th Down: LAJ's Don Williams has three pluses and three minuses from the game, including a quote from OC Neal Brown who said that he was the one that convinced Tuberville to go for it on 4th down:
"I probably should have told coach Tuberville to punt it," Brown said. "I know better. I appreciate the faith. Next time, we’ve got to get that."
Tuberville = C: FWST's Dwain Price writes that Tuberville gave himself a "C" for his first game:
"As a head coach I'll give myself probably a C," Tuberville said Monday, a day after a 35-27 season-opening win over SMU. "We had them on their heels, and as a head coach sometimes you forget certain situations."
Snip.
"We went quarterback sneak on the goal line [earlier in the game] and didn't have a very good snap and I just completely forgot about that," Tuberville said. "Then I tried to do a quarterback sneak in another one where our timing was off.
"I'll get better as a coach. I'm going to work hard this week, watch a lot of film, do a lot of drills and try to get better."
Video: KAMC's David Collier talks with QB Taylor Potts and WR Lyle Leong after the game and Brandon Rawe has video from Monday's press conference . . .
Miscellaneous: LAJ's Adam Zuvanich writes that Tuberville was quite the jokester on Monday . . . the DMN High School blog looks at the performance of four Texas Tech commits (FYI, there was something funky about he blog website, so I'm blockquoting the info):
Texas Tech:
Kindred Evans, DE, South Grand Prairie - team held Mesquite to 118 total yards to take a 2-0 start
Alfredo Morales, G, Arlington Sam Houston - Sam Houston rushed for 181 yards in 55-14 loss to Sachse
Tony Morales, C, Arlington Sam Houston - As a team, averaged 6.03 yards per carry over 30 attempts
Freddie Warner, DB, Pinkston - Scored all three TDs in 20-0 win, two on punt returns (56 and 65 yards)
Warner with two punt returns for touchdowns? I'll take it . . . DT's Jon Arnold writes about the overreacting fans to Sunday's win . . .
New Mexico Lobo Links: I'm thinking that I'm just not looking in the right places, but the only small article I found this morning was from the ABQjournal about LB Carmen Messina being iffy for this weekend's game. Or maybe I'm up too early.
Big 12 Links: LAJ's Adam Zuvanich looks around the Big 12 and throws out his top 25 ballot for this week . . . Tulsa World's John Klein has a conference buzz . . . Omaha World Herold's Lee Barfknect looks at the struggles around the Big 12 . . . KC Star's Blair Kerkoff writes at the running games of the Big 12 . . . LAJ's Courtney Linehan writes that Texas Tech lags behind the rest of the Big 12 running the ball . . .