Golf
Red Raiders Make Late Charge On Day 1 At Southern Highlands: https://t.co/FguLeEk4um #WreckEm pic.twitter.com/84nXIZRIMm
— Texas Tech Men’s Golf (@TexasTechMGolf) March 8, 2016
Track & Field
Texas Tech men ranked No. 12 in pre-NCAA @USTFCCCA rankings – https://t.co/oqaHd1j4bq #WreckEm pic.twitter.com/d5klMKHmKu
— Texas Tech Track & Field (@TexasTechTF) March 7, 2016
Baseball
Game with Oral Roberts Canceled. Texas Tech announced that the Tuesday night game against Oral Roberts was canceled due to inclement weather that’s expected today. This means that the next time this team will play will be on Friday for a four game road trip against No. 9 California in Berkley.
Basketball
Looking at the Brackets.
- ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has Texas Tech as an 8 seed playing Virginia Commonwealth in Raleigh, North Carolina.
- CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm also has Texas Tech playing VCU, but as a 7 seed and playing in Raleigh.
- SI’s Michael Beller has Texas Tech as a 7 seed and playing St. Joseph’s in the first round.
- FOX Sports’ Stewart Mandel has Texas Tech as a 7 seed playing Cincinnati in St. Louis.
Winning is About Continuity. Good stuff (video only) from ESPN’s Andy Katz talked to Texas Tech head coach Tubby Smith about how he turned around Texas Tech and what it meant to him. Smith said, briefly, that if you want ot change culture of a team you have to have continuity.
Like Brothers. LAJ’s Krista Pirtle writes that Toddrick Gotcher and the rest of the team came up with a covenant, certain beliefs that they could all agree upon, to bond this team: teamwork, religious beliefs and respect:
“We clicked as we were coming up with the covenant,” Gotcher said. “It was easy for everybody to pitch in on what they liked and didn’t like. As a group, we’re so close. It was easy to come up with. … If something goes wrong, we always go back to the fact that we have a covenant that we have to go by. We have to respect it. We all signed it so we know coming in that it’s the main priority.”
Football
Patrick Excited. RRS’s Will McKay writes that defensive line coach is prepared and is excited to get going:
Breiden Fehoko is the young, talented leader for this crop of defensive linemen’s future, and Patrick knows he was forged by fire through Big 12 play as a freshman last fall. That’s not the only player he’s excited to see get after it, though.
“With Fehoko, what he went through as a true freshman last year, unbelievable. But, you look at guys like Gary Moore, that’s what those guys are supposed to look like. Good length, and he’s putting on some weight. Then you’ve got Big Pips (Ondre Pipkens), a transfer, and I’m excited about those guys. You can go right down the list with all these guys. They’re bought in, and I think they just want to get – I know they want to get better every day.”
Stockton Expects Open Competition. RRS’s Michael DuPont and LAJ’s Don Williams talked with RB Justin Stockton, who thinks there will be an open competition during the spring. First blockquote is from RRS and the second is from the LAJ:
“What’s funny is that when we introduced ourselves, when he said his name – it kind of sounded familiar,” Stockton said. “So I was in there thinking, ‘hey, where do I know this name from?’ and come to find out, I figured that he was the running back coach at UCLA whenever I was in high school and so it was pretty funny, we was laughing about that.”
And:
“That doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “I play my part. I do my role. Coach (Kliff) Kingsbury and the rest of the staff are the ones that call the plays and say who’s going to be getting the ball.”
The new set of eyes in the room, and the one to whom Stockton referred, is former NFL running back DeShaun Foster. The former UCLA staff member was hired as running backs coach just three days before spring practice started.
Foster hasn’t had much time to make judgments. From watching video, Foster says, he’s discerned that he has good backs who are, in his words, pretty fast.
“Talented room. Not a lot of experience, though,” Foster said. “Just got to teach them how to be a back, really. I want to see their eyes, what they’re looking at, their steps. Get everybody on the same page. So just little things.”