Leading Off

The most underrated program at Texas Tech because all they do is win, but the ladies tennis team beat Illinois on Saturday to advance to their 4th straight Sweet 16 (official site). They’ll play No. 6 Texas in Winston-Salem, N.C. on Thursday, May 17th. Congrats on a terrific run thus far.

The men’s track and field team not only won, they whipped the competition at the Big 12 championship, finishing with 165 points, the most since conference realignment (official site).

“This was so incredible,” said head coach Wes Kittley, who led his men’s team to an indoor and outdoor sweep this season. “This group has a lot of confidence. We feel like we are a little bit better of an outdoor team than we were indoor. From the 4×1, the 400 hurdles, the discus… those 10’s start adding up. This was a lot of fun.”

Devine Oduduru was named the high point scorer of the meet, winning the 100m, 200m, and participated in the 4x100m relay.

Asking me to summarize the Big 12 Track and Field Championship is not something that’s going to happen. Here’s a summary to day 2 (official site). All I know is that it appears that this team kicked some tail, but I don’t know. If you want specific results, check this out right here. The ladies finished 6th overall and I’m sorry for not giving them as much publicity, I really don’t know where to start, although I know that Kaylee Hinton won the heptathlon for her second straight Big 12 Championship in that event.

The softball team fell to Texas in the 3rd place game at the Big 12 Championship, 9-2 (official site) and finish with a record thus far of 29-26. Michaela Cochran and Erin Edmoundson were named to the All-Big 12 Tournament Team. The team was invited to play in the 17-team National Invitational Softball Championship (this is apparently like the NIT in basketball, it’s not the NCAA Tournament) and was actually an automatic qualifier as the top Big 12 team that didn’t make the NCAA Tournament (official site). They’ll play in Conway, Arkansas against Stephen F. Austin on Wednesday and will also play UT Arlington and Central Arkansas in the regional.

The men’s golf team will participate in the NCAA Columbus Regional starting today at 6:30 a.m., paired with Oklahoma State and Illinois (official site). This marks the 17th straight year for the men to make the NCAA Tournament, what an incredible run. Let’s do some more.

The men’s tennis team fell to San Diego 4-2 in the first round of the NCAA Los Angeles Regional, ending their season with a 19-11 record for the year (official site). I think what comes up later in the summer is the individual and double’s championships.

Texas Tech Basketball

Chris Beard and the staff will host shooting guard Both Gach (6-7/190) . . . today (TTUHoopsFans @ Twitter). Gach has been been offered by Kent State, Loyola Marymount, New Mexico, North Dakota, Portland State, Southern Utah and Utah, and he currently plays for Arizona Compass Prep. Here’s some highlights, he’s #5 on the court and #1 in your heart. As an aside, he’s got a heck of an outside shot, some really nice handles and he’s a pretty good distributor as well.

Texas Tech Football

Very cool story about San Diego Chargers head coach and former Red Raider footballer Anthony Lynn who went back to UNLV and earned his college degree (LA Times). Lynn was six hours short of his degree when he left Texas Tech and he focused on football when he finished up:

Lynn took courses in sociology and psychology, in public health and exercise, and sports science, doing his final project on a wide array of issues facing NFL players upon retirement.

“The more I researched, the topic of mental health kept coming up, and the more I learned about mental health, it kind of gave me awareness … mental health is broader than what I thought,” Lynn said. “Things like identity crisis, things like boredom with athletes post-career, and how that can lead to other sicknesses and sometimes [be] fatal.

“So that’s probably the biggest thing I learned, and my capstone project was about athletes transitioning to post-career, and how to be more successful in doing that.”

A-J Media’s Don Williams has another notebook and I think we need another bullet pointed list (this is the third day to use this term and no one has called me out on it):

• The two-deep on the offensive line (the parenthetical is the backup): Travis Bruffy (Madison Akamnonu) at left tackle; Dawson Deaton (Gio Pancotti) at left guard; Paul Stawarz (Bailey Smith) at center Jack Anderson (Jacob Hines) at right guard; Terence Steele (Akamnonu and Will Farrar) at right tackle.
• DeMarcus Fields started at cornerback, but he is apparently a fallback option at safety should Jah’Shawn Johnson or Vaughnte Dorsey get injured. Kisean Allen, Thomas Leggett and Quincy Addison are the other back-ups with Desmon Smith and Adrian Frye the back-up cornerbacks.

A-J Media’s Don Williams writes about Texas Tech signee KeSean Carter, who was the 6A 100m title at the UIL meet in Austin, running a 10.22. I think that’s pretty fast.