The Morning Stake | 2019.05.16

Leading Off

Here We Go. I think it’s going to be a busy day, so buckle up. Baseball hosts TCU today and softball starts their NCAA Tournament run tomorrow after an incredibly long drought. Oh, and there was some men’s basketball news that we get to post as well. Let’s get it.

Texas Tech Golf

Texas Tech Softball

Texas Tech Baseball

TCU vs. Texas Tech. The series thread goes up later today. Keith will have an audio preview for your ears this morning.

Still Top 8. D1Baseball still has Texas Tech hosting as one of the top 8 teams.

Texas Tech Basketball

Mock Draft. NBC Sports’ Rob Dauster is one of my favorite college basketball writers and he has Jarrett Culver going to Phoenix:

I’ve been on the Culver bandwagon for a long time. He has terrific size, he played two seasons in a college program that prioritizes defense above all else and he’s a much-improved passer that, at 6-foot-7, can operate ball-screens. He also just covers so much ground. He’s not super-explosive, but his strides are so long that he’s by you after one dribble.

This risk here is the perimeter shooting. He had a dreadful month of January shooting the ball, but Tech’s entire team did. I’m also concerned that his lack of burst will be a bigger issue in the NBA than it was in college, but I think that is worth the risk at No. 5 when, presumably, the other options are going to be guys coming off of knee injuries or the third-best player at Duke.

Texas Tech Football

Numbers Crunch. SI’s Andy Staples has a story about how players who enter the transfer portal may not have the options available to them because other teams have reached their 25 scholarship limit that you’re permitted each year. Staples explains that every player that signs counts towards the 25, high school, JUCO or transfer, and players that enter the transfer portal, the school has no obligation to keep that player on scholarship (that’s something I didn’t know).

They will see this as an opportunity, because the power is about to swing back in their direction as programs analyze their scholarship situations. Nebraska coach Scott Frost recently said he kept a few scholarships in his back pocket for potential transfers. Miami’s Manny Diaz explained how he is using the transfer portal to restore class balance in Coral Gables. But even the coaches who had the foresight to stash some scholarships because of a potential bump in the transfer population didn’t store that many. There will be less FBS scholarships available than there are FBS players in the portal, which means those coaches with scholarships can afford to be choosy and grab only players who either can fill an immediate need or who project as future stars with a little seasoning. Everybody else? They can just leave them in the portal.

I don’t think I realized the risk because I’d think that most programs get pretty close to the 25 scholarship limit each signing period, which means that they have no ability to sign transfers. Texas Tech was pretty well grossly undersigned (only 18 players signed in the 2019 class where TCU was at 26 — am guessing that someone didn’t qualify)

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