The Morning Stake | 2017.12.29

Lady Raider Basketball

Texas Tech Basketball

Strong Big 12. KC Star’s Jesse Newell writes about Kansas’ chance to win the Big 12, but also focuses on the overall strength of the Big 12 and Ken Pomeroy also discusses what he believes will be the records for some of these teams:

“Certainly the notion of getting through the league with two or three losses seems to be far-fetched. It wouldn’t be shocking if four losses won the league,” Pomeroy said. “If Kansas could go through with four losses, that’ll be actually a really good year. It may set them up for possibly a 1 seed in the (NCAA) tournament.”

Pomeroy’s projection, built on adding win probabilities from each remaining game, has KU going 12-6. That’s one game better than Texas Tech, West Virginia and Oklahoma, who all are listed at 11-7.

And that clumping at the top poses a risk for KU as well. An 18-game league slate is a relatively small sample size, so even if KU is statistically best in the conference, it still could be overtaken by a team on a hot stretch or one that is able to win more than its share of close games.

Texas Tech Football

Uniform Poll. Don’t forget to vote in yesterday’s year-end uniform poll. I’m going to leave it open until noon today and I’ll cirlcle back and we will end up voting on a top 5 overall through the next week or so. There has only been 354 responses and we can do better than that.

Mahomes Starting. KC Star’s Terez A. Paylor has a nice artile on what former Texas Tech footballer is doing to get ready to start in his first NFL game:

“Every snap he gets is a valuable snap for him,” Reid said, when asked for his reasoning behind the decision. “He’s everything everyone said he was. A great person, works hard. All those things we’ve seen.”

The decision means Mahomes, the prized rookie out of Texas Tech, will get the first-string reps in practice this week while the Chiefs’ starter, veteran Alex Smith, works on the scout team.

Mahomes said Smith and other teammates were supportive when they heard the news.

“They just gave me confidence and told me just to go out there, play my game, play fast and come out of there with a win,” Mahomes said.

Benson Ready to Sign. Rivals’ Nick Krueger talked with Texas Tech commit Xavier Benson on winning a state title with Texarkana-Pleasant Grove and signing with Texas Tech:

“We know the relationship is good; I’m going to Texas Tech,” he said. “I don’t believe anybody’s going to come in and try and recruit me. I’m not interested in that anyway.”

Miscellaneous. TCU came back to beat Stanford, 39-37 . . . Michigan State demolished Washington State, 42-17, but WSU was without their senior quarterback, Luke Falk . . . Oklahoma State beat Virginia Tech 30-21 . . . Navy had 0 passing yards as they whipped Virginia, 49-7 . . .

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