ODDS AND ENDS | Outside Magazine with the latest on the four deaths of people climbing Everest. I find treks to Everest fascinating.
CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT | Team Speed Kills has an excellent update to yesterday's realignment news. Blogger So Dear is tired of everything and I'm pretty much with them. I don't know who said it, but there should be a rule that only permits conference realignment during the summer and once August 1st rolls around on the calendar, this stuff stops. Yahoo! Sports Dan Wetzel also wrote yesterday that the ACC/Big East have missed their chance.
SPRING SPORTS | Wanted to mention that Gonzalo Escobar and Raony Carvalho are playing in the singles and doubles NCAA Individual Championships as are Samantha Adams and Kenna Kilgo, who will play UCLA on Thursday for the 2012 NCAA Doubles Championships. In women's golf, Kim Kaufman is in contention after the first found of the NCAA Championship yesterday. In track, the men are still in the top 10, #9 and the women are #11 in the nation.
SOFTBALL | I have not posted a congratulations post to the softball team for their incredible season and assistant coach Aly Sartini tweeted the following photo that I thought could serve that purpose. Thanks to these student-athletes that have improved this program faster than I ever imagined:
Great photo of the #TexasTech Softball seniors. This group won 83 games the past two years and will be greatly missed. twitter.com/Matt_Dowdy/sta…
— Aly Sartini (@CoachSartini) May 21, 2012
BASEBALL | Congrats to CF Barrett Barnes and 2B Jamodrick McGruder for being named 1st team All-Big 12 First Team. Some additional players made other teams, including Scott LeJeune (2nd Team All-Big 12), RHP Duke von Schamann, C Bo Altobelli and RHP Shane Broyles (All-Big 12 honorable mention) and SS Tim Proudfoot (Big 12 All-Freshman Team).
LAJ's George Watson has an excellent look at potential coaching replacements for Texas Tech. Very much worth your time for a good list of candidates and their pros and cons.
BASKETBALL | The Williams and Hyatt Show had on assistant coach Bubba Jennings and it was a good listen. Best thing from the interview was that the team had a average GPA of 3.22. I'm starting to think that maybe Gillispie let his players know from the beginning that they needed to keep their grades up to make their transfers as smooth as possible. I'm starting to think that Gillispie may have been brutally honest with the players about their time at Texas Tech and his overall intent of bringing in a new team after last year.
FOOTBALL | The Orlando Sentinel is ranking all 120 or so FBS teams and they rank Texas Tech #83. I think this is pretty low and I'm not particularly high on the 2012 team.
Per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, backup Packers QB Graham Harrell is getting stronger. It is a good article about what Harrell did to improve during the offseason.