LINKS

Good Friday morning to everyone.  It's going to be a busy day. The morning links, the weekly conversation, the prediction thread and a Q&A; with Crimson and Cream Machine.

• Soccer | The official site with this weekend's two big matches, Kansas on Friday night and West Virginia on Sunday night. If you go watch a game, go to the WVU game this year. WVU is nationally ranked, as is Texas Tech. The DT (who is all over the sports this weekend) previews the weekend.
• Volleyball | The volleyball team is set to play Baylor on Friday and the DT has a preview of the game.
• Men's Basketball | The official site has a bit on last night's tip-off celebration where they had a three-point contest (won by Toddrick Gotcher), dunk contest (won by Jaye Crockett) and scrimmage. The DT was there and SG Dusty Hannahs talks about his experience last year.

"Being able to play a lot and start a lot of games a true freshman, like it really did make me a lot older than I feel," he said. "Just playing big minutes against teams like Kansas and just big-time teams, you get used to environments and stuff and I really feel like I can talk them through it because it wasn’t too long ago that I was the rattled freshman also."

There was also a good Q&A; with Rush The Court about the Big 12 season and they interviewed Fran Fraschilla and Jason King, and they were as positive about Texas Tech as I have seen from just about anywhere. Our friends at Wide Right & Natty Lite are counting down the basketball teams and think Texas Tech finishes 9th. SB Nation has their All-American team and our very own DanSwany helped vote on this.
• Football
  • Featuring Kingsbury | SI and the DMN both featured head coach Kliff Kingsbury.
  • The LAJ talks with CB Derrick Mays, who entered the game for a struggling Ola Falemi last week to make some really nice plays and he says he is healthy (suffered a knee injury last year and fought through it for the most par) and is now ready to go. Mays talks about how last year, Tuberville thought that Mays lost confidence:

    "I mean, you have your ups and downs, especially playing at corner, but I never lost confidence," he said. "I just feel like they lost confidence in me, at the end of the day. ... If you put me in, I was going to do my best, and that’s all I can really do. I never really bashed myself to where I lost confidence. I’ve always felt I’ve been the same person, and nothing really changed me. That’s what he said, but I thought differently."

  • I did a Q&A; with the guys over at Crimson and Cream Machine. Their answers will be up later today so make sure and constantly refresh VTM. They also did a podcast last night, and I was unable to join due to prior obligations, but they're good guys, so check it out.
  • Predictions | The prediction post will go up at 10:00 am, so don't prematurely predict. The DMN has two predictions, this one is from Mike Graham (the Texas Teh writer) and this one is maybe from the OU writer (they have writers for each school) and this guy calls Kingsbury "Bro Swag". FSSW has their picks for the week. NewsOK has their picks along with an annoying video that auto-plays. Football Study Hall has their F/+ picks of the week.

ACTION

The first video is about the Texas Tech equipment crew and Courtney Davis is standing in front of a wall that has all of the coaches and some of the players that played for that coach as well as that player's accomplishments. I think it was discussed that there wasn't any sort of reference to Leach in the football facility, but this wall has been up since this was built and I remember it when I took a tour of the facilities. The second film is the weekly film breakdown and the third is from our friends at the DT