ODDS AND ENDS | I don't know if this is really a moment of zen, but these are some cool photos of volcanoes from 2011.
LADY RAIDER BASKETBALL | I was so close to leading off with the football team, but the Lady Raiders deserve top-billing as last night, the Lady Raiders beat Western Kentucky, 75-38 (boxscore, quotes and video) to move to 10-0 for the year. Per LAJ's David Just, head coach Kristy Curry talked about wanting to get her team off to a hot start, something that hurt Texas Tech against Illinois last week:
The Lady Raiders shook off Saturday’s sluggish performance in Chicago, where they held on for a 70-64 victory against Illinois.
Curry saw to that by jumpstarting Tech with an aggressive man-to-man defense and full-court pressure that led to an 11-0 run.
"I thought I needed to do a better job in this game of getting us going early," Curry said. "I thought we made them rush some quick shots and some misses gave us a chance to run out of it. We want to make sure our defense gives us a chance to run and be effective."
The Lady Raiders are off for a good part of the Christmas break, and will play in the Surf and Slam basketball tournament starting December 29, 2011 against Cal-State Bakersfield.
I missed this article yesterday, but the men's team isn't the only team helping in the community, per LAJ's Tommy Magelssen, the Lady Raiders are out and about as well.
RED RAIDER BASKETBALL | The Red Raiders play tonight, in Tulsa, against Oral Roberts. Tip-off is at 7:05 and the game will be televised on Fox College Sports. I've done a Q&A with Summit Madness to preview the game and that preview will be up later this morning. I wanted to note this article from LAJ's Nick Kosmider, again, from the other day, about how head coach Billy Gillispie is seemingly doing a bit more than just handing out presents to kids:
He (Gillispie) contacted the Boys and Girls Club with the aim of creating a special day for children in the organization. Tuesday’s trip with children from the Optimist branch of the organization, was the fourth such event Gillispie personally funded, which included a ride in the limo, the selection of a handful of toys — the children chose everything from iPods to dollhouses — and a trip to McDonald’s. All three branches of the Lubbock Boys and Girls Club and the one located in Shallowater participated over the last week.
Well, that's pretty awesome.
In today's paper, LAJ's Kosmider writes that the Red Raiders are looking for a quality road win and Gillispie says that rebounding will be the key:
"We’ve got to rebound better, honestly," he said. "We got out-rebounded (42-40 against Grambling State), which is, for lack of a better word, pitiful on my part and the other big guys’ parts, so we’re going to have to work on that. Oral Roberts is a physical team that really gets after the boards."
TEXAS TECH FOOTBALL | I don't know where to start with this. It is not normal for me to take comments made in posts and then turn around and post them as a story, but this is an exception. If you want the long version, read this FanPost from yesterday. The short version is this, and keep in mind that this is all based on anonymous internets, so take it with a grain of salt, but I do know that something isn't right. I'll start with the word allegedly and applies to everything. Allegedly, defensive coordinator Chad Glasgow packed up his stuff on Monday, said that he knew that the writing was on the wall and left. Allegedly, head coach Tommy Tuberville has been unable to reach Glasgow and that allegedly, Glasgow is recruiting against Texas Tech and may have contacted OU commit CB Kass Everett's father to recruit against Texas Tech despite still being employed by Texas Tech. Allegedly, the reason why Texas Tech still hasn't fired Glasgow is a clause in his contract. I don't get the last bit, about the contract being a hindrance as to firing Glasgow as the natural course would be to fire Glasgow, claim a sovereign immunity defense and move on to John Lovett being your defensive coordinator.
I cannot make this stuff up and this story may rival the best story ever told. Anyway, anyone was to put the over-under on when Glasgow is terminated at today by 5:00 pm?
So here we are, and the officiate site has released a press release about the nine players that signed yesterday, which included the seven JUCO recruits (DE Lee Adams, LB Will Smith, WR Sadale Foster, WR Javon Bell, OL Rashad Fortenberry, LB Chris Payne and FS Austin Stewart). There were also two high school players that signed, OL Jared Kaster and CB Theirry Nguema. Also, per the official site, former Texas A&M offensive line coach Jim Turner, was officially hired. You can read the LAJ articles on the nine players that signed and the hiring of Turner.