If you’ve been wanting jonesing for some Texas Tech baseball stuff, well, you are in luck. Via the NCAA which was originally published on D1 Baseball. This preview ends up being free after originally published. I’ve never paid for a subscription and at some point I’ll definitely have to do that. I do know from people that do subscribe to D1 Baseball that there’s really not better national coverage anywhere and all of the people I’ve talked to, they all absolutely glow about D1 Baseball.

With that being said, this is just chock full of information.

As part of the preview, head coach Tim Tadlock said that the fall finished a bit on the tough side because of quarantine:

“Overall, we feel like we had a pretty good, but little different, fall,” Tadlock said. “We finished up the fall with 15 guys swinging the bat, and there were many days throughout where my son or coaches had to go out there and play defense for us. Some different guys got a lot of at bats this fall, so that’s the good part. But with all the ups and downs of the fall, things are still going to be a little interesting for us.”

Maybe the biggest takeaway for me is that this team is loaded with arms and Tadlock thinks that there’s a ton of options to start, including Micah Dallas, Mason Montgomery, Hunter Dobbins, Ryan Sublette, plus additional transfers and freshman that will all push for innings:

“We’ve seen those guys (above) plenty, and they each had different kinds of falls,” he said. “We know those guys really well, and I’d say this — if we wanted to trot any of them out there to start a game for us once a week, we’d believe in them. That’s the cool thing about this group of arms.

“We have a lot of good arms on this team, and we’re in a situation where you could just go out there and draw out 8-10 arms out of hat, and feel pretty good about where you are,” he added. “We have a strong group of arms that will go out there and command the ball, and they all have mound presence as well. This isn’t a group that we’re going to roll guys out there and just hope that they’ll do well. They’ll do well.

On the offensive side of things, Tadlock really emphasized the versatility of the players and that different players could give Tadlock some serious options:

“One thing we liked about the fall is that we got a lot of different guys some at bats,” Tadlock said. “We have some flexibility with about 12-15 guys, so it’s going to be really interesting to see how the spring unfolds from a lineup standpoint. We didn’t have enough guys playing at once to really trot out every single lineup option, so we still have to figure that out in January.”

Again, if you are looking for baseball coverage, D1 Baseball is a pretty great place to get that national coverage. I also understand that the schedule is still being worked out, but Kendall Rogers, one of the writers for D1 Baseball, tweeted last week, that the Big 12 has decided on their format:

BREAKING: @Big12Conference head coaches agreed to a season structure that would include 32 conference games (up from 24) with four-game series on the weekend. Non-conference up to institutions but midweek timing TBD. #Big12 ADs expected to vote on this next Tuesday. Stay tuned.

— Kendall Rogers (@KendallRogers) January 7, 2021

That’s 4-game series for the weekend, so pitching will be at an absolute premium for Texas Tech. The more arms a team has, the likely your team will be set up to win a bunch of games. It is also my understanding that the schedule is still being worked on, we know that UConn is set to travel to Lubbock, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Tadlock and the baseball community decided to do what Beard did, which is to try to schedule as many Texas teams, teams that can travel by bus, as much as possible.

This year should prove to be a lot of fun.