Leading Off
By my count, we’ve got two more Saturday’s before football. I spent the weekend (and am still not finished with everything on my to-do list) writing, getting things organized, and trying to re-work a few things before the season starts.
Congrats to the 12 student-athletes who graduated on Saturday (TexasTech):
Men’s Basketball: Niem Stevenson (Human Sciences), Josh Webster (University Studies)
Women’s Basketball: Brielle Blaire (University Studies)
Football: Demarcus Felton (Sports Management), Eli Howard (Business Management), Lonzell Gilmore (University Studies), Mychealon Thomas (Human Sciences)
Soccer: Natalie Schmutz (Kinesiology)
Softball: Cheyene Powell (Human Development and Family Studies)
Women’s Track & Field: Jasmine Torres (Sports Management)
Men’s Track & Field: Duke Kicinski (Kinesiology), J.W. Smith (Human Sciences)
Texas Tech Soccer
The soccer team downed Denver, 1-0, off of a Kristen Davis winner in the 80th minute (TexasTech & Box Score):
“I give our girls credit because they responded well to what they were presented with,” said Stone. “Where the game changed for us was in the second half when we established a really good possession rhythm and made DU chase the ball. Once that happened, we started to move them around more than we did in the first half and the chances started coming.”
The ladies outshot Denver 24-5, so it was seemingly a matter of time and goalkeeper Marissa Zucchetto only had 1 save that she had to make. The team enjoyed their day after their win.
Spending our off day in Colorado the right way 🏞😁
#WreckEm pic.twitter.com/M0Eb5JOi7e— Texas Tech Soccer (@TexasTechSoccer) August 12, 2018
Texas Tech Basketball
Head coach Chris Beard finally had his surgery to repair his torn ACL.
Successful surgery earlier today. Thank you Dr Kevin Crawford and Dr Lowry Schaub. Back on the court soon. #4:1 pic.twitter.com/5D89GuamX6
— Chris Beard (@CoachBeardTTU) August 11, 2018
Texas Tech Football
Texas Tech held their scrimmage on Saturday and you really can’t tell very much from the video, which is probably intentional. The other thing is that it appears that cornerback Octavious Morgan may be out for the year as many players expressed concern for the senior after yesterday’s scrimmage. Kingsbury will not address this situation until today and Kingsbury has not addressed the media since sometime last week.
2️⃣0️⃣ days until Red Raider football 🏈
🔴#WreckEm⚫️ pic.twitter.com/XIF3q3Mlbs
— Texas Tech Football (@TexasTechFB) August 12, 2018
The most informative bit of information came from David Collier and you don’t need me to help you draw any conclusions:
Today’s Texas Tech scrimmage was closed but the school did provide some highlights:
-Alan Bowman TD pass to Myller Royals
-McLane Carter TD to TJ Vasher
-Jett Duffey had two interceptions
-T-Zhwawn Henry had a big gain on a screen pass
-Da’Leon Ward short TD run— That David Collier (@CollieronTV) August 11, 2018
A-J Media’s Don Williams writes about senior inside receiver Zach Austin, who is returning from injuries that kept him out for the past two years. Austin says that he’s really good friends with Baker Mayfield, which is probably a lot of fun for everyone involved (you can ready his quotes at the story), but Austin thinks the incoming receivers are already very talented and trying to help the most he can:
“I try to rub off on them as much as I can,” Austin said. “For the most part, it’s just intelligence and knowledge of the offense and what’s going to happen during a game and how the defense is going to react and what kind of coverages you’re going to be looking for — just small things like that, because those guys are already talented, probably more talented than I am.”
Special teams coach Adam Scheier dropped a new Twitter handle, The Masked Riders, complete with a hype video:
With a new season comes a new identity.
The @TexasTechFB Special Teams are built on selfless sacrifice, brotherhood, and a veil of anonymity.
The @TTUMaskedRiders are born. #LetsRide #TTUMaskedRiders pic.twitter.com/QPpMFXTzZs— Aaron Miller (@CoachMillerTTU) August 12, 2018
Miscellaneous . . . Friday was a really weird day for news. Maryland head coach D.J. Durkin was put on administrative leave after a player, Jordan McNair, died of a heat stroke after offseason workouts. Apparently the environment at Maryland was based on some very difficult workouts that the coaching staff and strength and conditioning coach were allegedly very abusive. I understand pushing players, but a 19-year old kid died because of the offseason workouts and that’s unacceptable. If you’d like to read about the Maryland program, ESPN has you covered . . . In addition to this, an Ohio State reporter said that Tom Herman was the person that tipped off Brett McMurphy about the Zach Smith spousal abuse allegations (Smith was the receivers coach at Ohio State). The story was that Herman lost a player to Ohio State and then decided to tip off McMurphy. McMurphy responded by saying that Tom Herman was not his source. The story was even more interesting in that part of the Ohio State reporter’s story was that Herman helped Zach Smith’s wife with finances and Herman confirm that he did help a few years ago . . .