Track & Field
The Coach Behind the Jumpers. LAJ’s Don Williams has a story on the coach behind hte prolific jumpers at Texas Tech, assistant coach James Thomas (who, by the way is a good follow on Twitter).
Thomas coaches them, too.
It’s true Thomas inherited a bundle of talent, and Duffield and Adkins, in particular, might have done well regardless who coached them. Thomas sure hasn’t messed them up, though.
The guy wearing the hat has remained fairly anonymous through all this, at least among casual sports fans. You can be sure, though, that other universities’ track programs are well aware.
At some point, Tech and head coach Wes Kittley will be challenged to hang on to such a valuable asset.
Yes, he’s the one in the hat.
Me and @tculver7 standing with an Olympian. Congrats @bradley_adkins!! You deserve this!! #Rio2016 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/D7yZ8WZsmv
— James Thomas (@CoachThomasJr) July 11, 2016
Adkins Returns Home.
A day after earning a spot on the U.S. Olympic team, Bradley Adkins returned to Lubbock Monday. @TTU_TF_XC #Wreckem pic.twitter.com/10hO7LHfvN
— David Collier (@CollieronTV) July 12, 2016
Basketball
Mounts to SWC Hall of Fame. Via LAJ’s Don Williams, congrats to former Texas Tech basketballer Del Ray Mounts, from 1959-1962, for being added to the Southwest Conference Hall of Fame:
Mounts, the high-scoring Tech guard who twice was recognized on the UPI’s “Small All-America” basketball team for players no taller than 5-foot-10, will be part of the Southwest Conference Hall of Fame’s class of 2016 announced Monday.
He averaged 17.7 points per game for his three-season career (1959-62), and was the program’s second-leading scorer, behind Jim Reed, when he graduated.
“I put up a lot of them. Now and then, one of them would go in,” Mounts said by phone from Garden City, Kansas, his longtime home. “I kept shooting, shooting, shooting.
“I played ball with the Phillips 66ers (after Tech), and the coach said, ‘Keep shooting until you get it in. If it’s round and feels like leather, shoot it.’ That’s the theory I went on.”
Mounts was originally a walk-on from Perryton, as Williams story notes and earned a scholarship as a sophomore while averaging 18.9 points a game
Football
Amendola in Lubbock. WreckEm 24/7’s Carlos Silva Jr. via the LAJ, former Red Raider footballer Danny Amendola was in Lubbock this past weekend for a free training session at the D1 Sports Training complex along with recently graduated Jakeem Grant and Pete Robertson:
“There’s no secret pill you can take to get where you want to be,” said Amendola, who won Super Bowl XLIX with the Patriots in 2015. “It comes through hard work and there’s no secret to that. … It’s all about how they receive the information and take it into their own lives.”
Grant, who finished his Red Raiders career as the leader in career receiving yards, was happy to lend a hand to a community that rooted for him during the ups and downs.
“I trained out here, and I love to see the smiles on kids’ faces,” said the 5-foot-7 do-it-all athlete, whom the Dolphins drafted in the sixth round in April. “Just coming out here and having fun with them. For them being around us, it’s great. It makes them want to be at the next level with us. … That’s what I’m here for, to show people that size doesn’t matter. I’m going to continue to push that method.”
Congrats Coach Gaines!
BOARD MEETING: 7-11-16
Welcome to NLISD Coach JJ Gaines. Coach Gaines joins us from Texas Tech where he played DB. pic.twitter.com/Do53sYTEjm— NL Athletics (@AthleticsNL) July 12, 2016
Recruiting Scorecard. ESPN’s Max Olson looks at the Big 12 teams in recruiting and here’s the bit on Texas Tech:
The latest: The Red Raiders got this class rolling with seven new commitments in June. An offensive line class is coming together that has a chance to be pretty good. The staff already had No. 1 OG Jack Anderson and added pledges from Will Farrar (a former UCLA commit) as well as Casey Verhulst, Jared Hocker and Dylan Weaver. Defensive back Adam Beck, a former Houston pledge, was another nice flip.
Problems at Scout. I find this sort of stuff fascinating, within the industry if you will. Awful Announcing’s Andrew Bucholtz
has details on some upheaval at Scout, including the ouster of chairman Jim Heckman as well as the entire product team quitting en masse. It sounds bad, but there’s a lot of movement here, so maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds. Oh, and there are also apparently Russian investors involved.
Miscellaneous. ESPN’s Brandon Chatmon predicts the Big 12 season and it’s week 10 and a Texas Tech win over Texas . . . 24/7 Sports’ Christian Corona has an article about how Patrick Mahomes could be a dark horse Heisman contender . . .