Matador Mailbag: Expectations for all

Expectations change from person to person and from team to team. For the most part, your expectations are usually the bar for what merits a successful season or not. For Tech football, our expectations were to make a bowl game and even though we took a painful road to get there, we did and Kingsbury was allowed to keep his job. For Tech basketball, the expectations were to simply make the NCAA Tournament, and they far exceeded those expectations by getting a three seed and going to the elite eight, therefore coach Beard received a contract extension.

At VTM, we expect to have the most entertaining, diverse thinking, engaging, funny Texas Tech blog on the internet. If we don’t reach those expectations, then we work hard until we do because gosh dangit we love our readers, just like Kingsbury and Beard loves the university and if that doesn’t get you fired up for this mailbag, hopefully my boy big Phil will.

I absolutely hate the two quarterback system. I don’t believe going that route is beneficial for anyone. Kingsbury needs to pick a quarterback and use him till he cannot any longer.......... You didn’t ask what I want though, you asked if Kingsbury would do it and yes, yes he likely will. Kingsbury has shown before that he has no problem going to whoever he feels has the hot hand at quarterback.

Luckily for Kingsbury, he’s guaranteed to be the winning (and losing) head coach. If he finds a way to only lose in this situation, then I’ll be more impressed than disappointing.

I had a few questions in regards to Zhaire’s status on the team going forward. The closest thing we’ve seen in recent memory in regards to a Tech player entering the draft was Zach Smith entering and then removing himself from the draft last year. This is not going to happen here. Zhaire Smith already gave his farewell tweet, and even though he hasn’t hired an agent yet, once he gets his guarantee that he’ll be a first round pick, he’s gone people. Short term it would have been great to get another year out of Zhaire, he could have become an 18ppg guard who improved his game offensively and kept us competitive in a tough conference. Being the school’s first ever one-and-done is better for the program however. Beard can now use this in recruiting, and the better Zhaire’s pro career is, the better quality recruits we can get. As long as Beard is here, I don’t think we’ll get another recruit saying, “they just need more talent.”

P.S. Sorry Mark, Twitter, much like life, does not have an edit button.

Next year will be Davide Moretti’s break out year. There’s a reason he was highly coveted out of Italy and he actually impressed me as a freshman doing things I did not expect. He improved in his defense and his passing as the year progressed and now seems to be more of a pure point guard. His three point shooting suffered, but I believe he will find his stroke once again. CJ Roberts won’t be eligible until January which gives Moretti his chance to truly impress until then. If Moretti can hold off Roberts, I could see him turning into the second or third most valuable piece on the team.

Jeramey Gililan used to be on the practice squad so he probably thinks it’d be him, while Ryan Smith and Andy Eason coach kids baseball and basketball so they probably think it’s them, but the correct answer is me. Until any of them can beat me in wrestling, shot put, or discus aka real men sports, it’ll always be me........ To be honest, It’s probably Liz Rodriguez, I’m pretty sure she’d whoop all of us in any sport.

P.S. We have an Instagram page, catch us on IG @VivaTheMatadors.

What do y’all think? Tell me how wrong I am in the comments below.