Tag: texas tech

Categories
College Basketball

We just can’t let go of Bob Knight

Don’t ask us why, we can’t explain it. Bobby Knight is just days into his retirement, but we’re already feeling nostalgic for the Knight era. We’ve hated the cantankerous old fart for decades now, but suddenly it’s as if our best friend took our dog and split town with our old lady. Okay, so it’s not quite that bad, but if we had to equate our inner feelings to something it would be a scab – it’s irritating, it’s a nuisance, it’s annoying and it can be painful, but when it’s gone, you always find yourself feeling where it once was.

Yup, the General was pretty much a verbal Picasso.

Categories
College Basketball

The General quietly walks off the court for the last time


What can you say about Bob Knight that hasn’t already been said? Not much. The guy’s been called every name in the book from a S.O.B. to the G.O.A.T. And they all ring true in their own right. He was a pompous, arrogant, no-nonsense prick when he wanted to be, but there is no denying the longevity or the sustained success he achieved. 902 victories!! All the coach has to say is “scoreboard” when it comes to his legacy. But more importantly, when it comes down to the term “student athlete”, he made it a reality. Say what you will, but he graduated players and that should say as much about the guy as his red face and obscenity laced tirades. Even in retiring, the old ball coach was game planning.

Pat Knight has been the head coach designate since 2005.

“There’s a transition that’s going to take place here from me to Pat and I’ve dwelt on this all year long – about what would be the best way to do this, and how it would be best for him and for the team and for what we can do in the long run to make this the best thing for Texas Tech,” said Knight, who retires with 902 career victories. “I didn’t know, I’ve never really known when I was going to step down from this job. As I thought about it, my first thought was at the end of this season.”

Knight said he spoke with Newell for about an hour and an half Sunday.

“My thinking was that for Pat and for this team – most of which is returning next year – the best thing for the long run for this team would be for Pat and his staff to coach these remaining 10 games,” Knight said. “And (to) get an understanding, get a real feel for each other, be able to think over the course of the spring and summer going into next season about how people had played, how things had been done offensively or defensively, what could be done or couldn’t be done, what to stay away from, what to work on and develop that from a game standpoint as the coach in charge of everything rather than as an assistant coach.

“It was always a problem for me as to just what would be the most effective way in this transition, to make this transition. And with all the thought that I put into it, that’s exactly how I felt that it should be.

But, coach, before you go off into the sunset; can you tell us what the future holds for Bob Knight?

Links:

[Texas Tech Red Raiders]: Coach Bob Knight Retires
[CBS4.com]: Bob Knight Resigns From Texas Tech

Categories
College Basketball

You gotta choke a lotta kids to get 900 career wins

Like him or hate him, Bob Knight made history last night by upsetting the No. 9 Texas A&M Aggies 68-53, winning his 900th career game. Knight is the only Division I men’s basketball coach to reach the big 9-0-0, so we figured now is as good a time as any to relive some of the more outspoken moments in the surly old coach’s career.

Ooops, almost forgot this inspirational speech from the greatest men’s coach in the history of the game. (Considering it’s Bob Knight, we shouldn’t have to do this, but we will. Slap those earmuffs on all the youngsters out there!)

Hey, according to the big guy, those aren’t vulgar F-bombs; they’re just simple expressions of surprise, anger and dismay.

Links:

[Dallas News.com]: Knight earns 900th win in defeat of Texas A&M

Categories
College Basketball

Bob Knight hates impolite people

We’re sure you’ve seen the clips of Bob Knight going Bob Knight on his neighbor, but have you seen the entire drawn out video? These guys are arguing like a couple of school boys and they go on for nearly nine stinkin’ minutes.

But don’t get us wrong, there’s plenty of entertainment value in the uncut edition. Pay special attention around the 5:15 mark.

We love how this guy is so worked up that he’s still ranting and raving at Knight even after he’s back inside his house. Thank goodness the audio was working on his camcorder because if it wasn’t for the undeniable voice of Knight, nobody would know who the heck that was. Dude, you better have asked Santa for a new camera.

Categories
College Football

The Mike Leach speech leak

On Monday we told you about Mike Leach’s conspiracy theory involving Big 12 referees and the Texas Longhorns.  But we didn’t do his little tirade justice at all.  

Listen, we know where you’re going with the whole breakfast metaphor, but once we hear chicken and pig references getting thrown around, we just can’t help but laugh.  This guy’s explanations are about as big of a joke as his play-calling.  Nice rushing attack against the Longhorns.  Seven carries for 10 yards.  Yea, and the refs are why you lost.  

Categories
College Football

The Pirate Master is not a happy sailor


In case you thought that Mike Leach’s harsh comments didn’t extend beyond the four walls of the team locker room, guess again. The Texas Tech football coach went off in another press conference tirade on Saturday as he questioned the officials’ official officiating during the Red Raiders 59-43 loss at Texas.

Last year in this incidence, I bit my tongue and I regret it,” Leach said. “This whole, ‘Do everything status quo’ and ‘Oh my gosh, the conference might fine you’ – you know, sometimes it’s just the right thing to do. Sometimes nothing’s going to get changed until someone steps up and says something.

“I don’t know if this will impact anything or not. I want to make sure that I do my part to impact it the best I can. I’ve got players out there – we work hard, we try hard for years, days, weeks. There’s no defense if somebody doesn’t stand up and say something. People have to know. People have to be aware, and people have to quit being afraid of fines. People have to say something.

Leach was really ticked about a third quarter drive that saw numerous official reviews and calls go against Tech.

Unless this can change, the Big 12 Conference needs to take a serious look at having out-of-conference officials officiate the Texas-Texas Tech games and perhaps other games where there is proven to be a bias by officiating,” Leach said. “It’s unfortunate, and does the bowl picture enter into it? I don’t know. Does the money enter into it? I don’t know.

“Am I condemning the crew? Hell, yeah, I’m condemning the crew.”

Leach said Tech got “atrociously bad calls” in a 35-31 loss to Texas in Lubbock last season, in which the Longhorns erased a 21-point deficit.

“Perhaps there’s [a bias] for Texas,” Leach said. “Perhaps somebody that’s higher bowl-wise gets preferential treatment. I don’t know. I can’t guess the motivations, but I’m convinced it needs to be solved. If we get nicked like this again, we’ll have another talk.

Leach was even defensive about a referee who resides in Austin and who just so happens to have also officiated the game.

That can be argued in a variety of directions,” Leach said. “Maybe it is something as simple as guys sitting over the water cooler in their office, in Austin, talking to their friends about the great game they are going to see, the great players they are going to see. Perhaps a preconceived notion has developed how it’s going to come out.

Players, fans, staff, media, refs: nobody is safe from irate Big 12 coaches this year.

Links:

[Statesman.com]: `Incompetence or bias?’
[DallasNews.com]: Tech’s Leach rips officials after loss to Texas

Categories
College Football

Texas A&M and Texas Tech are already in game day form


Tuesday was a big day for a Big 12 rivalry. Texas A&M hasn’t defeated Texas Tech in Lubbock since 1993, but that doesn’t mean squat to Aggies running back big, bad Jorvorskie Lane.

We’re going to win in 2007,” Lane said. “That’s a guarantee. I promise you.”

Asked what coach Dennis Franchione – who had already spoken at the weekly press conference – might think of such a bold prediction, Lane shrugged.

“I’m a man,” he said. ” I can say what I want to say.

Obviously somebody has been watching too many Mike Gundy replays, but he has good reason to be jacked up for this game. Not only is head coach Mike Leach wounded, but the guy is talking dual Heisman candidates on the week A&M makes the trip. Oh, yeah, and there are students selling T-shirts with pictures of Michael Vick hanging A&M’s mascot.

The red and black shirts, with text that says “VICK ‘EM” in an apparent reference to the Aggies slogan “Gig ’em,” was created by a Tech student.

Officials say the student was trying to sell them before Saturday’s game in Lubbock.

The back of the shirt shows a football player wearing the number seven Vick jersey holding a rope with an image of the mascot “Reveille” at the end of a noose.

Wow, and we thought LSU’s fans were insensitive.

Links:

[MySA.com]: A&M’s Lane guarantees victory against Tech
[WISTV.com]: Tech bans T-shirts featuring Vick, A&M’s dog mascot

Categories
College Football

Mike Leach break his arm while bicycling…wait, bicycling??



We always took Leach as a scooter
guy for some reason.

Oddly enough our oddball injury of the day goes to one of college football’s biggest oddities, Texas Tech coach Mike Leach. We’d like to say that it involves a pirate ship, a parrot and a plank, but that would just be wishful thinking.

Leach said today (Monday) he broke a bone in his right arm. He hit the pavement after falling from his bicycle Friday.

Leach says he got a flat tire and tried to fill it with enough air to make it to his destination, but “it proceeded to run out of air. I took a routine turn, then went into a slide, so then it broke the arm.

While Leach takes the cake for stupidest boo-boo, Limas Sweed gets the nod for most demoralizing Big 12 injury.

Just days after losing to rival Oklahoma, the Longhorns wide receiver found out that his college career is over. Sweed needs surgery to repair ligament damage in his wrist stemming from a preseason incident.

I knew it was an injury I would be dealing with going into the season and I did everything I could to play through the pain and help the team,” Sweed said.

“I’ve aggravated it a couple of times and again last week and have probably been in more pain than I let anybody know,” he added.

If you thought Mack Brown was throwing a fit after Colt McCoy took a late hit in the game against Oklahoma, you know that the furniture is flying in his office today. After all, considering Texas’ running game is virtually nonexistent, without Sweed in the lineup, Brown chances of Leachin’ it up and getting 500+ yards per game through the air just lost all sorts of steam.

Links:

[KCBD.com]: Texas Tech coach Leach breaks arm in bicycle crash
[SportingNews.com]: Horns lose Sweed to wrist injury

Categories
College Football

Florida continues adding to their championship caliber rap sheet


Okay, something strange is going on in the world of football.

Florida and Texas seem to be having some competition over who can get the most players arrested in a calendar year. At the moment, the Gators are ahead by a nose thanks to safety Tony Joiner’s recent trip to the clink. Joiner became the eighth Florida player in the last nine months to get in trouble after he was arrested and charged with felony burglary on Tuesday.

Police say he was arrested around 5 a.m. outside the fenced impound lot of a towing company.

He was accused of pushing a heavy electric gate open to enter the lot in an attempt to retrieve his girlfriend’s car, which police say was being held in place of a $76 towing bill.

Joiner was taken to the Alachua County Jail and later released on his own recognizance.

And what makes matters worse is that Joiner is a senior captain who has already racked up 20 tackles this year. Not exactly the leadership Urban Meyer was looking for heading into a huge SEC showdown with LSU.

Then you’ve got Texas Tech linebacker Kellen Tillman, apparently trying to take some of the limelight away from the state rival Longhorns, who got popped with some pot. Perhaps he was trying to take a bit of the edge off after getting suspended for unspecified reasons in the Red Raiders 75-7 blowout of Northwestern State.

Tillman, a 23-year-old senior who played at Plano West, posted $750 bond on a Class B misdemeanor charge of possession of under 2 ounces of pot and was released shortly after his arrest late Monday, the same day his suspension from the team was lifted.

Tillman, a starter, had 21 tackles and a sack in Texas Tech’s first four games.

According to police, an officer walked up to one of two cars stopped in the center turn lane of a street and saw what he believed to be marijuana. Tillman, the only person in the car, was arrested at the scene, Lubbock police Lt. Scott Hudgens said.

It appeared the two cars had been involved in a minor traffic accident, Hudgens said.

If convicted, Tillman faces up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine.

All right, now for the real kicker: while these guys were getting hauled off by the cops, Pacman Jones was actually doing some good in the community for a change.

Jones bought 1,500 tickets to the next TNA Wrestling pay-per-view and he’s donating them to students as incentive for good grades and good behavior. Go figure.

Links:

[NewsChannel5.com]: Florida team captain Joiner arrested, charged with burglary
[DallasNews.com]: Texas Tech LB arrested on marijuana charge
[SI.com]: Pacman buys TNA tix for students

Categories
Philadelphia Eagles

Hideous uniforms disorient Lions, allowing Kevin Curtis to go bananas


The Eagles uniforms might be the ugliest duds ever donned, but Donovan McNabb and Kevin Curtis sure did like the way they fit.

The duo hooked up for a league record tying 205 yards on nine catches in the first half of Philly’s annihilation of the Lions. With touchdowns of 68, 12 and 43 yards under his belt before halftime, fantasy owners were loving life and already writing up their smack for the upcoming week before the second half kickoff.

And if the NFL mirrors the college game, then Detroit’s defensive coordinator might want to start packing his desk a little early.

After Texas Tech gave up 610 yards of offense to Oklahoma State in a 49-45 loss, Lyle Setencich stepped down from his job as defensive coordinator with the Red Raiders. It might not go down in the books as a firing, but after hearing what `pirate master’ Mike Leach had to say about his club, we have a feeling it wasn’t solely for the “personal reasons” Setencich claims.

After the game, Leach was critical of his players and coaching staff, saying “defensively, in the entire first half, we got hit in the mouth and acted like somebody took our lunch money, and all we wanted to do was have pouty expressions on our face until somebody daubed our little tears and made us feel better.

But to make sure there were no hard feelings, Leach threw in the obligatory line of BS that every fired coach receives:

We appreciate Lyle and the work he did for our program,” Leach said. “We wish him and his family the best.

Geez, thanks coach.

Links:

[KSL.com]: Curtis ties NFL record with 205 yards in first half
[Chron.com]: Texas Tech coordinator resigns as defense struggles