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Nine hours later, Yo and I arrived home around 6 yesterday. Lawrence, Kansas is very nice. I’d live there in a heartbeat. We drove around town quite a bit and it was just nice. The campus of Kansas University was okay, Yo said that Notre Dame and Texas Tech were nicer. The buildings were a bit disjointed in that there wasn’t a singular theme in parts of the campus. Regardless, it was still nice and as said before, the town itself was terrific.
On the Diamond
Texas Tech softball swept Arizona State with a 7-1 win yesterday, which secured the Big 12 title for the Red Raiders by themselves. Nijaree Canady went 5 innings giving up just a single run while striking out 4 and Samantha Lincoln pitched the final two frames, giving up just a hit. Mia Williams and Taylor Pannell both homered for the good gals. They will host Tarleton State on Tuesday and finish up hosting Baylor for the Big 12 regular season finale.
Stop Us Now |
 Buy Me a Coffee Strava’s Staking The Plains Running ClubPLEASE NOTE: Words that are in italics are quotes from a story or link. |
Texas Tech baseball was swept by Oklahoma State, 11-2 yesterday. Lubbock Avalanche-Journal’s Don Williams has a good article from the the post-game presser and if you want to know what head coach Tim Tadlock thinks about the position he’s in, well, I can’t recommend this article enough. As an aside, I didn’t see where the presser was on YouTube otherwise I would have embedded it. Tadlock gets emotional a couple of times about where the program is at:
“Your resources, if you really want to look at an SEC roster — you can do the research on what they’re putting in it — we haven’t had that,” Tadlock said. He acknowledged that he’s “guilty as anybody” who believed he could keep winning without adapting in a major way to the infusion of NIL money into the sport.
He became emotional and paused mid-sentence talking about it, then pivoted to an illustration of pitcher Micah Dallas, a Friday night starter for the Red Raiders, transferring after the 2021 season to Texas A&M.
“I can go back to the night before NIL started, Micah Dallas called me and said, ‘Hey, I’m going somewhere,’ ” Tadlock recounted. “It would have taken $50,000 to keep him. What I’m getting at is, I think J-Bob [longtime assistant J-Bob Thomas] and I especially are probably guilty of thinking we could always do it the way we always did it — because we never lost guys [pre-NIL]. Guys never left this program. They stayed. And so what am I trying to say: Over the last two or three years, there’s been a learning curve. That’s not really doable. Guys can’t walk out the door.”
/snip/
“We’ve got kids here right now. You’re always trying to get a player, and that doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop 365 days a year. I think we’ve got a staff that loves what we do. I think we want to get it right, and I think we can get it right again. I’m pretty hardheaded. I think we can do it with what we have, but in this day and age, you’ve got to get a little bit lucky. Guys have got to stay. Guys have got to become real guys on the mound.
I admittedly have a soft-spot for Tadlock and as mentioned yesterday, I’m probably not a good person to ask. For whatever reason, I still believe in him and have no rational reason why I believe that. I’d be terrible about making tough decisions.
On the Gridiron
Texas Tech football has their NFL free agent tracker for players who have signed deals with clubs:
OLB Terrell Tilmon / Chicago Bears
CB Dontae Balfour / Philadelphia Eagles
LB Bryce Ramirez / Kansas City Chiefs
OLB Charles Esters III / New Orleans Saints
ESPN’s Pete Thamel polled NFL scouts to ask which quarterback will be the best for the 2027 NFL draft and Brendan Sorsby tied for 3rd with Ohio State’s Julian Sayin:
1. Dante Moore, Oregon (24)
2. Arch Manning, Texas (16)
T3. Julian Sayin, Ohio State (5)
T3. Brendan Sorsby, Texas Tech (5)
5. LaNorris Sellers, South Carolina (3)
T6. Drew Mestemaker, Oklahoma State (2)
T6. Sam Leavitt, LSU (2)
T6. CJ Carr, Notre Dame (2)
9. Darian Mensah, Miami (1)