Texas Tech Tuesday Morning Notes - You Think I Have A Crystal Ball Edition

Double-T Nation News:

Lots of stuff this morning, I'm not sure if I'm going to get to all of it. Let's start with some bloggy items. To catch up on all things Kansas Jayhawk football, make sure and check out SB Nation blog Rock Chalk Talk and Kansas Jayhawks - It's Business Time, where KJIBT has 5 Reasons Kansas Could Lose.

I don't catch this every week, but the Beyond the Boxscore feature from Rock M Nation should be a weekly stop. I love statistical analysis, I'm not always capable of it, but I love reading it.

* This was a 'close game' until the final two plays.

* Smoke, mirrors and turnovers kept ATM in this game. Even in the first half, when they were scoring in buckets, their S&P figures were only above average. Part of that has to do with good field position, part with the fact that they continuously struggled in the redzone.

* Consistency, thy name is the Texas Tech offense and its per-quarter stats.

* Ridiculousness, thy name is the Texas Tech offense on 3rd downs.

* Check out Tech's rushing stats. I've mentioned this many, many times now, but if Tech ran the ball for 19 straight plays, defenses would still be playing the pass on play #20. They have no excuse for ever having a rushing S&P under 1.000. It's like free money.

Good stuff.

Texas Tech Football:

Hat-tip to Ferret88 who made mention of it in his FanPost, but LAJ's Don Williams and DT's Alex Ybarra are reporting that the Cory Fowler experiment is done and Donnie Carona is probably back being your full-time kicker. As Williams notes in this story, Captain Leach is getting a little tired of answering questions about the kicking game, but here is the Captain on the situation and whether or not he'll go for two:

"Quite honestly, I think that Donnie’s going to just be fine," Leach said. "He needs to relax. I mean, it’s not like anything’s changed. The guy (he was) in high school would be more than satisfactory. As a matter of fact, he might lead the league around here. So all he needs to be is the guy (he was) in high school."

Leach says now that going for two-point conversions could be a solution.

"Might," he said. "I’ve never completely ruled that out to begin with."

Here's the testy part:

"We have to straighten out the kicking," Leach said. "Do you really feel like that’s a good question? They already have hurt us. We’ve missed six extra points. It’s cost us six points. You think I have a crystal ball? Next question."

Special teams ace, Jared Flannel said that the staff is working to correct the problem:

"As a matter of fact last night they started doing something a little different, with the dummies you know," Flannel said. "They had some tall people stand up and make them like get the ball up instead of more line drives. They should be all right, they'll be fine. They were looking pretty good last night."

Also of note, some of the graduating seniors have never lost to Texas A&M:

"One thing I’m proud of is, in the four years I’ve been here, I’ve never lost to an Aggie," offensive tackle Rylan Reed said. "That was kind of a big deal for me."

"It’s one of our biggest rivals," safety Darcel McBath said. "I’m 4-0 against them. They can never take that away from me."

We've got a couple of stories on the offensive line talking about their fancy nicknames. Just to catch you up:

• Marlon Winn: Fat Albert
• Brandon Carter: Mankind
• Shawn Byrnes: Kool-Aid
• Stephen Hamby: Mr. Incredible
• Louis Vasquez: Reed said it was super hero Indian, but they really talking about Native American Superfriend, Apache Chief, who spoke the words "Inyuk-chuk" and was able to grow to "vast sizes".
• Rylan Reed: The Incredible Hulk

Here's the KAMC28 video of Rylan Reed talking about the O-Line's nicknames, along with some nice editing.

LAJ's Don Williams writes the offensive line, and Rylan Reed talks about how the running game has helped the offense tremendously:

"I tell you what," Reed said, "I think it’s scary (for opponents) to have to put more people in the box against us, to have to respect our run game all of a sudden, to know that in short yardage we’ll run it right up the middle or wherever we really want to right now. It’s great."

ESPN's Big 12 blogger Tim Griffin talks about Leach going for the touchdown in the wanning seconds of the TAMU game on Saturday and would tend to agree with SAEN's Mike Finger, who thinks that Leach sees a game in terms of black and white, either you're trying to score or your trying to stop the other team from scoring.

DMN's Chuck Carlton writes about these next 4 games for Texas Tech:

The Red Raiders, 7-0 and boasting a nine-game winning streak, understand what's at stake between Saturday and Nov. 22. In a four-game span, they face No. 19 Kansas, No. 1 Texas, No. 7 Oklahoma State and No. 4 Oklahoma.

"This is the time of the season that's going to make or break us," junior offensive lineman Brandon Carter said. "Nothing in the past really matters at this point, and what's ahead of us is really our biggest competition."

Three of the teams looming just ahead are in the top 10, and Kansas plays like a top-10 team in Lawrence, the site of Saturday's game.

FWST's Dwain Price writes that Leach is not a fan of computers, in general:

"I just try to avoid computers as much as I can," Leach said. Obviously, you need somebody around that knows how to run a computer — and the video is on computers — but to me, anything involving computers is very frustrating, so I ignore it every step that I can.

"I don’t have any control over them. It’s not like I can send the repairman or somebody to go fix them."

DT's Alex Ybarra has a good Texas Tech football notebook:

• Leach says that Mr. Crabtree's injury may have been a case of wanting a little attention:

  Because Leach is mum when it comes to injuries, even the slightest ones, he re-enforces that no player has ever been injured since his arrival in 2000. In Crabtree's case, the Heisman Trophy Candidate and 2007 Biletnikoff winner was simply trying to get the spotlight to come his way by faking the injury.

  "Like everybody, they like a little attention," Leach said. "Some people try to get their 15 minutes at once and some try to spread it out."

• Leach on Reesing and that he doesn't believe that height isn't a difference:

  "So I don't think it's really height related," he said. "Let's say you get a quarterback that's 6-foot-4, the notion with an offensive lineman who is 6-foot-7 doing battle with a defensive lineman in his lap, but due to (the quarterback's) extra three inches of height that he's gonna be able to release it over that guys head is a little ridiculous.

  "I know that that's kind of the urban myth on the thing but it's not very accurate. You have to throw in lanes and openings and things like that."