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It’s such a whirlwind during a tournament weekend, feel like I can never keep up. I’ll post the basketball thoughts piece tomorrow. Yo has a track meet today, as a reminder, he’s in the 8th grade, and he said yesterday in practice he jumped 43 feet in the triple jump, which would shatter his junior high record. I know he’s also eyeing the 200m record, which currently sits at 22.9.
On the Diamond
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I am sure that you all already know that the On The Diamond post from this past weekend was fully updated every morning and fully updated on Monday where softball swept a ranked UCF team and baseball won on Friday, lost on Saturday, and then won on Sunday against Arizona. You love to see a series win for baseball.
Texas Tech softball is going to be in Stephenville this evening to take on Tarleton State at 5:00 p.m. on ESPN+. These ladies will be back home this weekend to host Iowa State for a 3-game set.
Texas Tech baseball hosts New Mexico for a mid-week game this afternoon, first pitch is at 2:00 p.m. and I don’t think this game is going to be broadcast anywhere. infielder/pitcher Connor Shouse was named the Big 12 Co-Newcomer of the Week:
A native of Jasper, Ga., Shouse went 10-for-21 in the Red Raiders four contests last week and hit three home runs and drove in nine. Four of Shouse’s 10 hits were for extra bases including three home runs. He also threw a scoreless inning on the mound and struck out two.
Shouse recorded at least two hits in all four contests and scored a run in all four games as well.
On the Hardwood
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal’s Nathan Giese on Texas Tech general manager Kellen Buffington and how he operates (I recommend reading the whole thing):
“Me and Mac actually had a conversation about him this morning,” Buffington said of Blanchard. “Just get him on and kind of see, because I think he’s done an outstanding job with that football program, with high school players and the portal. So kind of want to see what practices they’re using and try to see if we can use some of those same practices on the basketball side as well.”
Blanchard and his fellow player personnel staffers have a war room in the Womble Football Center where they analyze potential targets, dissecting film and conducting their own investigations. Buffington prefers to rely on his mind, bottling up information until it’s time to go to work, keeping his ear to the ground while affixing his eyes on what’s in front of him.
“Mac, he’s a multitasker,” Buffington said of McCasland. “He can do a lot of things at a lot of different times. Around this time, we’re talking almost every day, a lot of times a day, trying to figure out kind of what we want to do and how we want to do, budget, what percentages. It’s a lot going on, for sure.”
On the Gridiron
ESPN’s Bill Connelly has a deep-dive on returning production and how SP+ (Connelly’s predictive formula to determine how good a team actually is). Teams are starting to catch on that transfers are important:
Incredibly, transfers have increased by 64%, from 13.9 per team (14.2 not including service academies) to 22.8 (23.3), in just the past two years.
Factoring in all sorts of things, Texas Tech is thought likely to improve in 2026:
Georgia, Oregon, Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Oklahoma. That’s right, almost half of last year’s CFP teams also rank in the returning production top 20, though finalists Indiana (52nd) and Miami (78th) got hit at least a bit by attrition. Georgia (Gunner Stockton), Oregon (Dante Moore), Texas A&M (Marcel Reed) and Oklahoma (John Mateer) all return their starting quarterbacks, and though Texas Tech lost Behren Morton, that loss was dampened by the addition of one of the most statistically prolific QBs in the portal in Cincinnati’s Brendan Sorsby. That could be a theme for 2026: After so many top teams headed into 2025 with new starting QBs, experience levels at the most important position on the field should be much stronger this season, at least among power conference programs.