On the Court
The Lady Raiders fell to TCU, 63-42 on Saturday, dropping their conference record to 3-10. They have the week off before hosting Baylor on Saturday.
On the Diamond
Texas Tech softball went 5-1 over the weekend with a 2-0 win over Marshall, a 1-3 loss to No. 25 Mississippi State, a 10-9 win over Penn State, a thrilling 6-5 win over No. 16 Nebraska, a 11-0 win over Iowa and a final 3-0 win over Kennesaw State. They will play in Austin in a tournament over the weekend.
Double T 97.3’s Jamie Lent looks at the offense and notes that the baseball team is capable of playing small ball as well mashing it. This group will open play with a 3-game series in Chapel Hill to face North Carolina.
On the Gridiron
The big news before the weekend was that Texas Tech and James Blanchard agreed to a new 3-year contract. Blanchard was perhaps expected to take the general manager job at Notre Dame, but he ended up staying in Lubbock and with head coach Joey McGuire.
“The success of our personnel department led by James Blanchard has obviously been noticed nationally with the significant interest he continues to generate annually,” head coach Joey McGuire said. “We’re excited James and his family have chosen to remain Red Raiders and continue the work we started not long ago in building a consistent program that can compete for Big 12 titles. We’re much closer today than when we first arrived, and I look forward to continuing to work with James on further building out this roster.”
Texas Tech signed the top-rated transfer portal class this winter under Blanchard and his personnel department, continuing the Red Raiders’ success in attracting the nation’s top prospects. The Red Raiders began McGuire’s tenure with consecutive top-25 pulls for the 2023 and 2024 classes, which were both ranked as high as No. 23 by the various recruiting services.
Texas Tech landed On3’s top transfer portal class following the 2024 season as the Red Raiders signed 17 newcomers to add to an already-talented list of returners that have arrived under Blanchard such as All-Big 12 first team linebacker Jacob Rodriguez and wide receivers Caleb Douglas and Coy Eakin, among others.
CBS Sports’ Brandon Marcello wrote about the relationship between the Kansas City Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes, and Texas Tech. I thought this bit about the Mahomes’ logo being on all uniforms was interesting:
“We’ve seen tremendous excitement and sell-through around our Texas Tech apparel from Red Raiders fans,” said Jim Murphy, senior director of NCAA sports marketing at Adidas.
Talks are underway to permanently place his Gladiator logo on the Red Raiders’ adidas uniforms for every football game starting in 2026, Tech officials said, in what might be the first full-time branding agreement between an active NFL player and an NCAA university.
“We look forward to the day when the Gladiator logo is on all of our uniforms and apparel here at Texas Tech,” Hocutt said.