SOFTBALL | The softball team starts their Regional in Washington today. LAJ's David Just has an article on the team and here's head coach Shannon Hays:
"Just making it is not enough for these girls," Hays said. "They want to end up in Oklahoma City. It’s a tough road to get through this regional, then you have to get through (No. 1 seed) Cal. But playing in the Big 12 prepares you for these types of things."
Congrats to Adriana Perez for being named on the NFCA All-Central Region First Team!
BASEBALL | Sigh. Texas Tech really needed to win and Kansas really needed to lose. Neither one of those things happened yesterday. Texas Tech lost to Kansas St. 7-5 (official site). LAJ's George Watson recaps the game.
GOLF | The men's team finished in 5th in yesterday's NCAA Greensboro regional with more golf ahead the rest of the weekend.
TRACK AND FIELD | Congrats to the 26 athletes that have qualified for the NCAA Regional.
MEN'S BASKETBALL | CBS Sports' Matt Norlander writes about the mass exodus of transfers at Texas Tech and there are a couple of incorrect thoughts there. There's no doubt that head coach Billy Gillispie signed all of those players last year, including honoring the commitments from Pat Knight and signing four of his own (Jaron Nash, Biggie Minnis, Ty Nurse and Kader Tapsoba). Of the four that Gillispie signed, Nurse and Tapsoba will apparently remain. The other thing to mention is that Minnis is headed to Rhode Island and he didn't have any other offers other than Texas Tech last year. Nash had no other offers and is now headed to North Dakota. Somehow, after the years that Minnis and Nash had, he was able to get a school to take them on as transfers. Norlander also states that there are nine freshmen to arrive in the 2012 class and that's just not accurate. Trency Jackson, Daylen Robinson, Aaron Ross, Rodrigo Silva and Jamal Williams are all JUCO or prep players.
The bottom line is that a huge amount of transfers after each year is worrisome, but this 2012 class is really Gillispie's first class with a full year to recruit. Sure, there were some players that Gillispie recruited, but like Tuberville, recruiting late is a dicey proposition. Gillispie was also able to find homes for every player that transferred at a four year university except for Kevin Wagner who is headed to a JUCO. I'd also like to remind you how truly awful this past year's team was in so many aspects.
FOOTBALL | A couple of quick recruiting updates. QB Cody Thomas committed to Oklahoma yesterday. A week or so ago on Tech Talk Chris Level seemed to imply that maybe the staff wasn't that high on Thomas, not because he didn't have the talent, but because Thomas is a absolute talent playing baseball and perhaps the staff felt that the wouldn't be able to give all of his time to football, or as much time they think would be needed to be the quarterback for the team. Also, WR Rashaad Samples has his top six teams and one of them is Texas Tech, along with Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma St., Ohio St. and USC.
I have not had time to listen to this, but on 1340 The Fan, Donny Anderson, Tom Wilson and other members of the 1965 Texas Tech football team had a big old sit-down earlier this week.
Smart Football's Chris Brown has written a book, The Essential Smart Football, and talks about the new book with Big East Coast Bias.
Good stuff from Texas Football's Greg Tepper, which is that a team that loses a Heisman winning quarterback will win 2.3 fewer games the next year. I wonder what this would be if you looked at a team that loses an All-American at quarterback.