The Morning Stake | 2018.12.19

Leading Off

An signing day open thread is forthcoming

I’d love for someone to help explain if this means anything different or if this is a continuation of being named as a Tier One university from a few years ago. Either way, huzzah!

Lady Raider Basketball

Congrats to the Lady Raiders as they’ve reached their win total from last year. They’ve got a long ways to climb, but this is a big deal and should be celebrated. When you’re trying to pull a program out of the muck, you have to celebrate the small things. Huge games from Chrislyn Carr, Brittany Brewer, Sydney Goodson, and Zuri Sanders.

Texas Tech Baseball

It’s almost time for baseball!

Texas Tech Basketball

SI with a roundtable look at the match-up between Texas Tech and Duke (more there):

Texas Tech must mitigate the Blue Devils’ advantage on the glass. Duke is the seventh-best offensive rebounding team in the nation, led by the dominant presence of Williamson. Barrett attacks the glass with abandon, and Marques Bolden snags over two offensive boards per game.

While Duke dominates the glass, Texas Tech relies on Culver as its leading rebounder. Tariq Owens is the only player among Tech’s top seven scorers taller than 6’5″. Texas Tech has forced plenty of misses this season, but a string of second-chance opportunities as well. To compete with the Blue Devils at MSG, the Red Raiders will need to rebound with abandon and limit Duke to one-and-done in the half court.

As an aside, Duke demolished Princeton last night by 51.

Texas Tech Football

Exclusive-exclusive interviews with head coach Matt Wells: Everything Lubbock’s David Collier and KCBD’s Pete Christy to start off with.

This was posted in the comments, but we’ll post it here again, CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodds grades the coaching hires and I don’t know how in the hell Kansas gets a A for hiring Les Miles (no offense) and Texas State gets an “A” for hiring Jake Spavital and Liberty gets an “A” for hiring Hugh Freeze, but here we are. Texas Tech gets a B+:

Red Raiders everywhere were hoping for a more well-rounded coach. They may have gotten it in Wells. Kliff Kingsbury not only couldn’t coach defense but couldn’t find anyone who could for his staff on a consistent basis. Wells is well-respected having led Utah State to five bowl games. His defenses finished in the top three in the Mountain West in four of his six seasons.

Miscellaneous . . . this story from Bleacher Report’s Mike Piellucci is correct in that it begins with Trey Haverty being the first guy to identify Patrick Mahomes, while working for TCU nonetheless and then being hired by Kliff Kingsbury, as the quarterback for Texas Tech in that class . . . if you like high school football, you should check out Texas Football as they have previews of each of the championship games (it appears that a lot of work has gone into this so it’s worth your time if this is your thing) . . .

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