The Morning Stake: February 23rd

Administrative

Hotchkiss Resigns. Per LAJ’s Don Williams, Texas Tech’s football publicist (also known as sports information director) resigned yesterday. Blake Zimmerman will take over for the time being.

Tennis

Women’s Tennis Defeats No. 33 Washington. The Texas Tech women’s tennis team defeated No. 33 Washington, 4-2 yesterday.

“This was kind of a strange day because I didn’t think we played poor doubles necessarily,” Texas Tech head coach Todd Petty said. “I thought we played the big points a little bit tentative today, but I didn’t think we played poorly. It’s not your usual locker room talk after losing the doubles point. I think we had some confidence going into singles. I thought we played our best singles of the year today against a very good and talented Washington team.”

Baseball

Smith Named Big 12 Player of the Week. Congrats to Stephen Smith who was named the Big 12 Player of the Week after having this opening weekend:

This is the first weekly award for Smith, who hit .571 overall (8-for-14) with seven runs scored, four doubles, five RBI, two stolen bases, a .857 slugging percentage and a .684 on-base percentage. He ended the weekend with at least a share of the Big 12 lead in five categories: hits, runs scored, doubles, total bases and on-base percentage.

Football

So much sports to get to in football, it’s amazing.

Breaking Down the Class. Ian Boyd writes for Football Study Hall and he’s been breaking down the classes for all of the Big 12 teams. I’m not going to blockquote it here, there’s a lot there. Boyd isn’t very high on Jett Duffey, giving him a C+ as he’s not sold on Duffey making quick decisions and if he can be the same player at 200 rather than 175. I also think Boyd is a bit off regarding how Kingsbury views receivers (values quantity over quality) and I think that Boyd has Damarcus Fields as safety and I’m not sure about that and again criticizes Kingsbury for not taking enough defensive backs, but I’m guessing that Boyd really didn’t see that the receiving corps was pretty much depleted and needed a re-boot, both this year and last year.

Do Work.

Texas High School Coaches Strongly Dislike IMG Academy. Via SAEN’s Ben Baby, in the February edition of the “Texas Coach” magazine, president Glen West said that IMG could destroy the profession of high school coaches:

“At the current moment, IMG Academy has actively recruited three of our top Texas high school football players to play their senior season for their traveling football team,” West wrote. “The reason given for these young athletes to attend this academy is to better prepare for the next level of competition. I adamantly disagree with the reasoning.

Later in his letter, the longtime Brenham coach said Texas schools shouldn’t schedule teams like IMG for competition. IMG played DeSoto the last two years. DeSoto, which is located in southern Dallas County, played Steele the last two years. DeSoto, Steele and other state powers generally have a tough time scheduling teams that are willing to play them during nondistrict.

I think this is kinda a big deal for two reasons: 1) you don’t want to make high school coaches angry; and 2) Baylor is involved. Baylor currently has two players who are playing for IMG, Kellen Mond and Jhamon Ausbon. Mond is a highly rated quarterback from San Antonio. This could be nothing or this could be the thing that really turns high school coaches away from Baylor and I find it odd that Baylor has taken this stance (they’ve even gone so far as to all visit the facility, so I’m guessing that they’re all in on IMG) considering Briles close ties with high school coaches.

Strong Sought to Testify in Booster’s Divorce Case. Follow along here. Via the Courier-Journal, Texas head coach Charlie Strong has been requested to testify in a divorce case involving a big-time donor and trustee at Louisville, Jonathan Blue, the implication from the husband in this matter is that Strong may have had an affair with the wife, Tracy. Lots of folks (not me, because I really don’t know) seem to think that this could be problematic for Strong, who very much sells the aspect that he’ll take care of your sons and that plays well to moms (as it should).

Miscellaneous. Via the WV Gazette-Mail, contract negotiations between West Virginia and Dana Holgorsen have ended . . . ESPN’s Jake Trotter asks 10 questions, one about each team, in the Big 12 . . . DMN’s Mike DuPont has five questions heading into spring practice . . .

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