Lady Raider Baskeetball

PREVIEW | Lady Raiders to Face Oklahoma on Wednesday

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— Lady Raider WBB (@LadyRaiderWBB) January 9, 2018

Texas Tech Baseball

Congrats to Steven Gingery on being selected as a Perfect Game/Rawlings Preseason First Team All-American!

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— Texas Tech Baseball (@TTU_Baseball) January 9, 2018

Texas Tech Basketball

Vagabond Coach. From College Basketball Talk’s Rob Dauster is this longform on Chris Beard’s travels as an assistant head coach at Texas Tech under Bobby Knight and the six years that it took for him to return to Lubbock. Its allgood and you should read the whole thing, but this part was fascinating to me:

After initially being retained by Gillispie, the university and Beard had decided to part ways. The timing could not have been worse. By late-June, most of the movement in the assistant coaching ranks has come to a close, particularly at the higher-end of the salary scale. Most of the college coaching jobs that Beard, who has three daughters that live in Texas, could have chased were filled.

And that’s assuming he could have gotten them in the first place. Industry sources told NBC Sports that the split between Beard and Gillispie was hardly amicable, and reports at the time stated that “heated altercations” between the two, including one that was “physically broken up” by Texas Tech’s Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt, led to Beard’s resignation.

Then there was the buyout.

Beard wouldn’t have seen any of that money if he took another college coaching job, and none of the openings he tried to chase down came with a salary large enough to make up that difference. Beard has kids that he needed to support. He was already staring at the paycut that comes with losing a position as the associate head coach of a Big 12 program. Passing up on that buyout money to take a spot as the third assistant with some random mid-major team didn’t make sense, not when he could have very well ended up looking for another job by the following Final Four.

Midseason Awards. College Basketball Talk’s Rob Dauster handed out midseason awards and Chris Beard was the midseason coach of the year and Keenan Evans made the third team all-American midseason team. Here’s the portion about Beard:

In a Big 12 outpost like Texas Tech, having a coach that wants to be there and has a defined vision of what will work is absolutely critical. Look at what Fred Hoiberg did at Iowa State or Scott Drew at Baylor or Kansas State with Bob Huggins and Frank Martin (both of whom wanted to be there until, well, they didn’t). Beard fits that model perfectly, and it’s paying off immediately in west Texas.

Texas Tech Football

Helmet. This really has nothing to do with Texas Tech, this was just so interesting that I wanted to post it and get some thoughts from you all (look at me distract you as Texas Tech only has 5 coaches or whatever). This is the Vicis Zero1 Helmet and there was this neat interview by Uni-Watch. Watch the video.