The Morning Stake | 2019.03.27

Leading Off

Status. Preview for the Michigan game is complete for me, tonight I work on the baseball preview and just hope that I get back from soccer practice on Thursday night to be able to start the game on time. Fingers crossed.

Texas Tech Track and Field

Texas Tech Golf

Texas Tech Tennis

Texas Tech Softball

Texas Tech Baseball

Texas Tech Basketball

Fireside Chat. Darryl Dora joins head coach Chris Beard with a real-life fireside chat.

Re-Ranking the Sweet 16. Texas Tech is part of the Sweet 16 and there are a handful of sites that re-ranking the 16 teams. Let’s do that. ESPN’s Jay Bilas, who hates your Red Raiders (this is a joke because I have no idea how Bilas feels about Texas Tech, but I am sure that some will be offended) has your Red Raiders 11th:

This is the best defensive team in the country, and the offense has consistently improved the past two months. Don’t get caught up in the numbers with this team because only the numbers of the past month really count. That is who Texas Tech is. Jarrett Culver is a spectacular player who will have the opportunity to show it off. He is one of the best and most efficient players in the country. He is a star now, but he is just scratching the surface of how good he is going to be. That’s scary.

CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander (who also hates Texas Tech, but not quite as much as Bilas) has Texas Tech 9th:

Actual seed: No. 3 in the West. While Texas Tech’s top-ranked defense and its future lottery pick, Jarrett Culver, get most of the attention, allow me to bring into scope the play of 6-10 senior Tariq Owens. He’s scoring an outstanding 1.69 points per possession in the tournament, according to Synergy. The 28-6 Red Raiders had the most impressive win in the second round: after trailing 25-24 to a very good Buffalo team, TTU broke open a 30-plus-point lead in the second half before settling on a 78-58 win. TTU was a win away from the Final Four last season.

Great Defenses. The Detroit News’ James Hawkins writes about the Texas Tech defense:

β€œThis is a mixture of a very veteran team, probably one of the more veteran teams we’re going to see all year long,” Beilein said Tuesday in an appearance on WTKA. β€œThey’ve got that good mixture of guys that have been around, are hungry to win. Not coddled guys that are just trying out for the NBA. These guys are trying to win, and they’ve really had a successful year in a tough Big 12.

β€œIt’s going to interesting to see how we react. I would say their defense is really good. I mean, it’s terrific. I will say in the Big Ten we see a lot of terrific defenses. So it won’t be a shock to us, but it won’t be easy either. We’ve been used to that.

“It doesn’t mean we’ll be successful, but hopefully we won’t get turned around and can’t make a pass or something. … We’re going to have to be better than we were in those (Big Ten) games where we lost.”

Texas Tech Football

Miscellaneous. Via SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey has the latest on the in-fighting between former head coach David Beaty and the Jayhawks . . .

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