Leading Off
Best day of the year!#TeamUA • #WreckEm @UnderArmour • @UAWomen pic.twitter.com/gh6zZ7Eede
— Texas Tech Volleyball (@TexasTechVB) August 8, 2018
It’s good to be back. We kicked off preseason practice this morning!
📰: https://t.co/z8KXVCXDyx#WreckEm 🔴🏐⚫️ pic.twitter.com/SFhlUBpCYS
— Texas Tech Volleyball (@TexasTechVB) August 8, 2018
Lady Raider Basketball
The Lady Raider basketball program released their non-conference schedule, with home games to open up the year against Jacksonville State, Louisiana-Monroe, Idaho, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Houston Baptist, and Stephen F. Austin. Then, the team will head on the road to play Florida and Nevada, and then return to play Southern, Texas Southern, and Abilene Christian at home (TexasTech). With this program having to set the reset button, I’m good with this.
Texas Tech Basketball
Unfortunate news for Zhaire Smith as he suffered what’s being referred to as a “Jones fracture”, which means that he could be out 6 to 8 weeks recovering. We do know that he already had his surgery and he’s in good spirits.
Zhaire Smith of the Philadelphia 76ers broke his foot, but took the time to send a message to Luke. @zhaire_smith is first class pic.twitter.com/msfIZKPzSm
— Tim Siegel (@TimSiegelTTU) August 8, 2018
CBSSports’ Matt Norlander breaks down the new rules that became effective immediately and there’s not much point of me summarizing it, but it is significant. The thing that caught my eye were these items, which I presume will apply to all of college athletics:
– The NCAA is requiring all school presidents, chancellors and athletics staff members to contractually comply with any and all future investigations. This is the NCAA’s way of trying to institute a de facto version of subpoena power, which it lacked previously.
– School presidents and chancellors will now personally be held accountable by the NCAA for their athletic departments abiding by the rules.
– The FBI’s case into college basketball brought about mounds of documents of information. Previously, the NCAA did not allow for information and findings from outside investigations at established agencies to be used in its infractions process. Effective immediately, the NCAA and its Committee on Infractions can use information obtained in other probes as a means to an end for its own investigations. This will be implemented immediately by the NCAA with the schools currently caught up in the Department of Justice’s case regarding multiple schools and alleged violation of multiple federal laws.
Personal liability?!?! I know what that means and can they get enough errors and omissions insurance to cover this potential malfeasance? And how is the NCAA able to enforce all of this? This is so wild. And now players will have 15 official visits. This is an insane number of official visits, I don’t know how many are currently allowed, but 15 is a ton for each player. And an official visit is where the red carpet is rolled out and the school pays for everything. Hosting that many kids really increases the recruiting budget so I’m not sure if programs will actually host more kids because of the cost.
BleacherReport’s Jonathan Wasserman has a 2019 NBA Mock Draft and your guy Jarrett Culver is projected to go to the Lakers at 23.