On the Hardwood
Lady Raider basketball announced their Big 12 conference schedule for the season, the first Big 12 game will be at Baylor on December 21st.
Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl announced that he was retiring and his son, Steven, will take over as head coach. This is not normally news for us at STP, but former Red Raider basketballer Kevin Overton transferred to Auburn in the offseason, I am sure, in part, because he wanted Bruce to be his head coach. Overton and the remaining players on the team now have a 30-day window to transfer. The problem is that we are approximately 40 days from the start of the season, not exactly a lot of time for a player and I’m not exactly cool with the timing of this for the players.
Kellen Buffington interviewed Jeff Linder and this was an A+ interview and Linder was great to listen to and hear his story and his philosophy. Would recommend.
On the Gridiron
The Ride. Definitely worth 8 minutes of your day.
Texas Tech football will play Houston at 6:00 p.m. and the game broadcast on ESPN October 4th.
Texas Tech football announced a couple of weekly awards:
- QB Will Hammond was named the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week and Freshman of the Week.
- LB Jacob Rodriguez was named the Big 12 Defensive Player of the week
ESPN’s Bill Connelly writes about week 4 and how Texas Tech’s transfer class was transformative
The performance against Utah was a display of force we’re not used to seeing from this team. And it made the Red Raiders the new favorite in the Big 12 race.
Big 12 preseason title odds per SP+: Kansas State 14.4%, Utah 9.1%, Arizona State 8.8%, TCU 8.5%, BYU 6.4%, Baylor 6.0%, Colorado 5.0%
Current Big 12 title odds per SP+: Texas Tech 28.6% (up 20.7% from the preseason), Iowa State 9.4% (up 2.1%), Kansas 9.1% (up 4.7%), TCU 9.0% (up 0.5%), BYU 8.8% (up 2.4%), Arizona State 7.1% (down 1.7%), Utah 6.0% (down 3.1%), Arizona 5.2% (up 2.0%), Houston 4.9% (up 0.7%)
We can’t say that Tech is an overwhelming favorite by any means — a 29% title shot still means a 71% chance of not winning the title, after all, and TCU, BYU, Iowa State and Kansas have all shown hints of major upside. But Tech’s general approach in the new NIL world is to basically spend like a champion until you become one. And their odds of winning their first outright conference title in 70 years have more than tripled since August. That’s called return on investment right there.
What’s Next with Joey McGuire and Robert Giovannetti:
CBS Sports’ Cody Nagel ranks team by tiers and has Texas Tech in the “In the driver’s seat” category, which is hte 2nd category:
Texas Tech (4-0): The Red Raiders are seeing major returns on their heavy NIL investment in this 2025 roster. They passed their first real test with a stingy defensive performance on the road at Utah in Week 4, silencing doubts about toughness away from Lubbock. With the Big 12 possibly shaping up as a one-bid league for the CFP again, Texas Tech still has little margin for error — getting to the conference title game with a clean resume is paramount.
Dave Campbell’s Texas Football’s Mike Craven wrote this last week and I forgot to post it, which is a really nice article on offensive coordinator Mack Leftwich and how he was born to call plays.