Texas Tech News, Notes and Links | 12 Things

The photo is the rugby team of the hometown of Texas Tech discuss thrower, Julian Wruck (linked below).  This is all you get for the rest of the day and I hope everyone has a totally awesome Friday.

1. Massive Tornado Hits Tuscaloosa - Roll 'Bama Roll and Tornadoes kill over 200 - The Big Picture - Boston.com | Pretty amazing how a sports blog can have such an impact on people keeping in touch, which means to me that no matter our differences, this is truly a community.  The Big Picture has some incredible photos of the aftermath from the tornadoes.
2. Scout.com: The Bootleg's 2011 Graduation Rate Analysis | This is pretty amazing work, which is the graduation rates for the 6 big conferences in 2010 (I think this is for 2010, even though it's the 2011 edition of this report).  There's some good news and bad news.  The good news first, Texas Tech is second in the Big 12 in graduating their football players at 69%.  Texas and Oklahoma are at the bottom of the list.  Now, the bad news, which is that Texas Tech only graduated 44% of their men's basketball players, which is in the middle of the pack, but that means that less than half of last year's seniors didn't graduate?  Can that be right?  Here's some more bad news, Texas Tech's baseball program has the 3rd worst graduation rate in the nation at 41%.  And of the three major sports discussed here, football, men's basketball and baseball, Texas Tech is the second worst in the nation, a big part of that is because of the basketball and baseball programs.  I would love to hear that this report is inaccurate, perhaps a response from the university.  I think I find the graduation rate for the men's basketball team to be the most shocking.
3. Red Raiders and Jayhawks Open Big 12 Series in Lubbock Friday - TEXAS TECH OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE and Red Raiders enter crucial set against KU Jayhawks - The Daily Toreador: Sports | If you have the time, go see the team this weekend and hope that they can win this series.  There are only 3 more conference series for this team to at win so if it's going to happen, it's got to happen now.
4. Tech Advances with Win Over Iowa State - TEXAS TECH OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE | The Lady Raider tennis team advances.  Congrats!
5. Linebacker Fundamentals: Zone Coverage - Shakin The Southland and Defensive Back Techniques: Cover 3 Pattern Read Examples - Shakin The Southland and Defensive Back Techniques: Cover 2 Pattern Read Examples - Shakin The Southland | Who wants some good strong football talk?  Do you?  Your're welcome.
6. Shattered dreams fused together - The Daily Toreador: Sports and Tech Has Rough Start to Penn Relays - TEXAS TECH OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE and Brown, Mason give Texas Tech two of country's best hurdlers | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and Tech track wraps up season in California and Pennsylvania meets - The Daily Toreador: Sports | The story from the DT was pretty good, it's about discuss thrower, Julian Wruck, who has the 2nd best throw in the nation and he's an Aussie.  
7. The All-Undrafted Team: The best draft-day snubs of the last 20 years, offensive edition - Dr. Saturday - NCAAF Blog - Yahoo! Sports | Blog friend remembers former Red Raider, Rylan Reed, as part of his all-undrafted team on offense.
8. Big 12 Basketball Attendance by Percentage of Capacity - Big 12 Hoops | Good stuff from Evan at B12H, where he not only took the basketball attendance figures from this year, but he figured out which university was filling up their arenas in terms of percentage and not a surprise, Texas Tech only sold 56% of the seats in the USA, which is dead last in the conference.
9. Introducing The 'NCAA Division I Bowl Licensing Task Force' - From Our Editors - SBNation.com | This news makes me go cross-eyed.
10. 2011 NFL Draft Mock Draft: 2nd Round - Mocking The Draft | More draft stuff, and a mock draft of the second round!
11. College hoops teams that could slip in 2011-12 - College Basketball - Rivals.com | The good news is that King things that Texas, Kansas and Kansas St. could drop off a bit next year.  So you're saying there's a chance?
12. The Revolving Door: Texas Tech - Big 12 Blog - ESPN | Meh.  I think this is the hardest part of Ubben's job, which is to talk about each team better than the fanbases for each team.  It's okay, but I don't think it's anything you don't know.