I’m sorry that I wasn’t around this weekend to update the baseball post. The family and I took a long weekend in Wimberley for my mother-in-law’s 61st birthday that was intended to celebrate for her 60th birthday last year, but with the emergence of Covid-19 last year, everything was completely shut down. So the weened was great except that the rental that we stayed at didn’t have Wi-Fi so I was left without any sort of ability to update anything. This is the last time that I’ll be out of town for a weekend for a while, although I am running an ultramarathon in April in Cleburne of all places.

The baseball post has been updated. Don’t forget that the final game of this series is at 1:00 p.m. 10:00 a.m.

And I’ve already posted, Chris Beard and his merry group of basketballers being a No. 6 seed in the South Region and will play Utah State on Friday.

Date: Friday, March 19th
Time: 12:45 p.m.
Location: Assembly Hall | Bloomington, Indiana
Line: Texas Tech -5

Desert News’ Jeff Hunter writes that Utah State is happy to be in the NCAA Tournament, but not satisfied:

Despite the Aggies’ uncertain future, USU head coach Craig Smith said he had “a really calm feeling.”

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep the previous three nights … but I fell asleep last night at literally 8:40 p.m. – and I’m a night owl – and had an amazing night of sleep, and I woke up really calm,” Smith explained. “I just felt really good about where we were at.

“The Mountain West had a great year. I thought the top five teams were very, very good. And we finished second in the regular season and then got to the championship game. I knew our metrics were really, really sound, they were really good.”

Spring practice starts for Texas Tech today and that means that if I wasn’t busy before, I will be now.

ESPN’s heather Dinich writes about the improved Big 12 defenses. Sounds insane, but it is true. Texas Tech isn’t mentioned, but what I can say is that my hope is that it happens soon. Here’s Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley talked about the innovation within the Big 12.

“I’m seeing things that are more cutting edge,” said OU coach Lincoln Riley. “We were always ahead of the curve offensively in the league, and in my opinion in the last two years I’ve seen a lot of things defensively that you simply don’t really see in other leagues. I think there’s a lot of evidence behind it.”

This has nothing to do with Texas Tech and is just about college football, ESPN’s Bill Connelly on college football’s next Clemson: Georgia; Notre Dame; Oregon; Penn State; and LSU.

Heartland College Sports’ Pete Mundo talked to Texas Tech head coach Matt Wells about heading into year 3 and the quarterback battle.