The Morning Stake | 2018.01.02

Texas Tech Track & Field

Lady Raider Basketball

Gray-Miller Named Interim Coach. Well, after yesterday’s news of Candace Whitaker being fired as the Lady Raider head coach, Shimmy Gray-Miller was named as the interim head coach. Yesterday, Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt held a press conference and you can check out A-J Media’s Carlos Silva, Jr. report from yesterday, where Hocutt said that he did not see progress with the program:

“You want to see progress. You want to see progress over the course of a season,” Hocutt said. “You want to see progress from year-to-year. And we just were not seeing that progress made with this basketball program, which led us to this position today (Monday).”

The Lady Raiders are coming off a 97-49 road loss to No. 6 Baylor in their second Big 12 Conference game Sunday. With the defeat, Texas Tech dropped to 6-7 overall and 0-2 in conference play.

“I believed it was in the best interest of this program and for the young women on this team for the next 16 games,” Hocutt said as to why he made the change two games into the Big 12 schedule. “I believed a change in leadership had become inevitable. And when something becomes obvious, you act on it. And I just felt like — given the set of circumstances with 16 games left to play, it was the best decision to make this change at this particular time.”

I don’t eveknow where or how to speculate on possibile replacements. It seems as if Whitaker’s program was plagued with a significant number of transfers and of the players that she has brought in, there’s been an obvious talent disparity with the rest of the Big 12. I hope that there’s a national search and that Texas Tech and Kirby Hocutt can get this program back to where it has been just a few years ago.

Texas Tech Basketball

Moving Up. Texas Tech moved up to 18th in the AP Top 25 Poll, while ESPN’s Power Poll has Texas Tech at 19 overall.

Texas Tech Football

Catching Up. If you’ve been living under a rock since New Years or just really tied one on, over the weekend, offensive coordinator Eric Morris left to be the head coach at Incarnate Word, and he was the third assistant. I’m about to throw a post up on the front page that running back coach Jabbar Juluke has left the program, probably going back to Louisiana is what I’ve been told. As of now, Joe Robinson’s contract was not renewed, Karl Scott was named the defensive coordinator at Louisiana, Morris was named the IW head coach and now Julke. With the 10th assistant, this leaves 5 spots for Kingsbury to fill in his coaching staff.

Back To Top