The Morning Stake: March 9th

Tennis

Golf

Softball

Red Raider Basketball

Buy your very own Staking The Plains t-shirt at the Staking The Plains Threadless Shop. Click on that danged shirt (or the link).

In the second game of the Big 12 Tournament, Texas Tech fell to Texas, 61-52 (recap | box score). It was a pretty terrible performance offensively, shooting only 36% of their shots and 26% from the three-point line and the team didn’t get to the line hardly at all, only 8 free throws. It’s been clear for a long time that this team needs another one or two offensive players who can help fill it up and I hope that’s on the way with Brandone Francis, Tommy Hamilton IV, Jordan Brangers, Josh Webster and Hyron Edwards. Plus the two freshman that will be on board next year, Jarrett Culver and Daniel Mading, and anyone else that ends up signing on over the next few weeks.

I think that what you’ll see next year is a better shooting and scoring team and a more athletic team and a more traditional team in the sense that it won’t be a team that relies on it’s big men to make shots from the outside, but rather relies on the handful of guards to create and dish and allow these big guys to do their thing inside.

The next step for this team could be an NIT bid after the weekend. The most disappointing thing about this team was that they simply couldn’t win on the road in conference play and they’ll have to get over that hump.

Head coach Chris Beard is admittedly disappointed and had this to say after the game:

It always takes some time to reflect and you’ve gotta be careful to talk in times like this. It’s the emotions more than intelligence. What I will say is that there’s nobody that wants Texas Tech to win more than me. We’re going to get it done here. We’re going to establish ourselves. We’re going to get better. Our returning players are going to get better and we’re going to recruit, and I just want everybody to know that loves Texas Tech basketball like I do personally that this kind of season ending is unacceptable and the way we played today is unacceptable. So we will use this as the starting line. I look forward to greater things ahead, but the expectations of our program is to compete for championships, to compete in the NCAA Tournament and to play better in this tournament. So we will do everything we can in the next 364 days to try to improve.

Football

Defense wins the day again. I think that’s Eli Howard.

Mel Kiper Jr. thinks that Patrick Mahomes proved to be the quarterback that showed a little something to teams at the NFL Combine.

Miscellaneous . . .

  • 24/7 Sports’ E.J. Holland polled 16 recruits at The Opening in Dallas this past weekend and asked the players why they’re leaving the state and it’s pretty simple, that the teams in Texas aren’t very good and the one that I thought was interesting was who negative recruits and the top spots was Baylor with 20% and TCU, Tulsa, Oklahoma State, Houston and Alabama tied at 13%.
  • Via USA Today, the NCAA incurred $1.4 billion in expenses during the 2016 fiscal year, depleting $404 million of assets of the NCAA. A big part of this was a one-time supplemental distribution to Division I members of $200 million, with *only* $32 million in legal fees.
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