Some terrific campus photos, the tennis teams continue to be ranked and the Lady Raiders are blown out in Norman. Plus, the football recruiting continues.
New Campus Photos. Lots of great stuff from TTU Red!
Caldwell kicked off the 2016 season with a bang, finishing first in both the prelims and the final of the 60-meter hurdles in Fayetteville, charging down the track to a time of 7.75 seconds to claim the victory. His mark sits atop the Big 12 leaderboard this season, ranks second in the NCAA and eighth in the world.
Tennis Teams Ranked. The men's team and women's team have both continued to be ranked as the men moved up to #15 in the ITA Rankings and the women are at #17 in the rankings.
Lady Raiders Blown Out in Norman. This was a pretty terrible game as the Lady Raiders fell to Oklahoma, 92-53 yesterday morning (recap). Texas Tech was down early, really down, 30-6 after the first quarter. Ivonne CookTaylor led the way with 20 points, but other than that, there wasn't a ton to get excited about. OU forced 20 turnovers and scored 25 points off of turnovers.
Another athletic director told me the league is "split at best" on the expansion issue. … I sense zero groundswell at all for adding Houston, even though there are 225,000 UH alumni living in that fourth-largest city in the nation and, according to the school, it has the second-most alumni in the State Legislature. …. And don't rule out the Big 12 considering extending football-only invitations. … There are so many ramifications concerning expansion, but one that schools should remember is that in a 12-team conference, you can't play a round-robin schedule, and some teams will not play Texas and Oklahoma every year. That could be good as far as avoiding a potential loss — assuming Texas becomes Texas again — but bad in that the lack of marquee opponents could adversely affect season ticket sales. Quite frankly, I would think the smaller Big 12 schools would favor expansion for the sake of stability after schools like basketball power Kansas saw how vulnerable they were in the last round of realignment. OU president David Boren, Baylor's Ken Starr and West Virginia's Gordon Gee head up a Big 12 composition committee to study expansion.
And to add to this, Gridiron Now's Chad Scott dug a little deeper into how much money the SEC Network really made of the reported $527.4 million in revenue. Without giving it all away, and I do recommend clicking on over, the SEC Network was really approximately $102 million, which is great, but then divided by 14 colleges and the SEC's cut (thus by 15) the total amount is around $6.8 million per institution.
Confirmed offers with Andress head coach Jeff Woodruff, who said Texas Tech ST coordinator Joe Robinson visited Andress and showed interest.
Mahomes came into his own in his first season as a full-time starter, despite the fact that the Red Raiders are still searching for consistent vertical passing threats. That's likely part of the reason he took too many chances, throwing 15 interceptions.
If the program has really addressed the need for physical skill players, Mahomes should find another gear in '16 and turn himself into a legitimate NFL prospect. He already has the arm, athletic ability and intangibles.
. . . ESPN's Max Olson counts down the top 25 Big 12 players and has 11 through 15 with appearances from Mahomes, RB DeAndre Washington and LT Le'Raven Clark . . . Texas Tech made the hiring of defensive line coach Kevin Patrick and running back coach Jabbar Juluke officially official . . . Texas Football's Mike Craven has an overview of the Texas Tech recruiting class as does DMN's Mike DuPont . . . via LAJ's Don Williams, Trey Haverty has been hired as the defensive coordinator at Lamar . . .