DTN's Top Five:

1. Corn Nation on why Thursday's night game does not determine conference heirarchy, just the national championship.
2. Uncommon Sportsman with yo-yo geniuses.
3. I've quietly been thinking that this is the guy I would want as my head coach should Leach leave. It's in a completely different direction
4. So, you cannot vote your team #1 if you're Texas or Utah.
5. Mark Cuban on buying the Cubs.

Someone was asking about the Texas Tech hockey team . . . well, they've defaulted on their first payment and will be playing in Odessa.

I thought this was pretty interesting, from TFY Draft, they projected the professional prospects that played in this year's Cotton Bowl between Ole Miss and Texas Tech. The number of first-round talent on Ole Miss' team is pretty amazing and is perhaps a better indicator of why Ole Miss won, just more talent, especially along the lines, where games are typically won or lost.

Mississippi

Texas Tech

SAEN's Mike Finger with more on conference vs. conference pride:

All of this is part of a phenomenon of communal smack-talk peculiar to college football, and maybe to rap music (unfortunately, the Big Ten has no hand gesture comparable to the West Coast "W"). For some reason, coaches, players and fans think a victory for one member of a conference is a victory for the entire league, even if the teams share nothing more in common than a schedule and a commissioner.

This shared sense of pride among rivals does not exist in many other places. When Barack Obama is sworn in as President later this month, John Cornyn will not make any grand pronouncements about how the U.S. Senate has been proven superior to governors and the House of Representatives.

If Mickey Rourke wins an Oscar for "The Wrestler," it will not automatically raise the stock of other Roman Catholic actors raised in South Florida. And if the New York Giants win another Super Bowl in February, it is unlikely that any of the fans in Tampa will be singing the praises of the NFC East (unless, perhaps, Wade Phillips is in attendance).

Ugghh.

Last night, Texas Tech lost to TCU, 85-80 (boxscore) and this was an incredibly frustrating game on so many levels. I really wanted to do a report card last night, but decided my time would be better spent sleeping.

My gripes aren't with coaching, to an extent, they're with players not moving their feet on defense and not being patient on offense. I didn't think that Junior Knight coached a bad game last night, except that he played Darko Cohadarevic for 11 minutes. I know that he was short-handed and without the services of Trevor Cook and Damir Suljagic, but Darko has a long ways to go before he's a competent Big 12 player. Although Darko only put up 3 shots, I thought his defense was awful and his shot selection was even worse. He's got to figure things out before you put him on the floor in Big 12 play.

Overall, the perimeter defense was really good at times, jumping out on passes and really defending the 3-point line, however, the entire team struggled when TCU took any Texas Tech defender off the dribble. It didn't matter if it was the on-man defender or any help-defenders, no one stepped up and as a result, allowed too many TCU layups.

Offensively, I thought was okay, but the biggest problem is that this team settles for jumpshots and 3-point shots. It's obvious that Texas Tech is more efficient when they work inside-out, and it was so evident when Texas Tech was mounting it's 2nd half comeback attempt when free throws as a result of taking the ball inside helped the team get back, not the give-up offensive sets where Roberson, Okorie or Voskuil just heave up a 3-point shot.

This team has to work inside-out and with Lewandowski manning the middle, it should be so much easier than in previous years.

LAJ's Jeff Walker writes that the team had more downs than ups and had this from Pat Knight:

"It was definitely up and down," Tech head coach Pat Knight said, looking severely worn down after the Red Raiders lost their first home game of the season in their non-conference finale. "… It was just too much up and down to think you can beat good teams playing like that. You just can’t turn it on and off whenever you feel like it."

DT's Alex Ybarra also has his game story and there's a Pat Knight comment regarding the defense:

"Especially with what we've been doing in practice, that's what people don't see in practice," he said. "I just get tired of hearing about it from so-called people that think they know what they're talking about.

"Come to practice, see what we do. See how we break down. These kids gotta get it sometime. It's not like we just roll the ball out there."

I tend to agree with Knight here, in that there's no way that he's not coaching his players to move their feet, cut off an opposing player heading into the lane, but for whatever reason, it's not happening.

I'm hopeful that this team turns the corner when conference play starts on Saturday against Baylor in Waco (tip-off 12:30 p.m., TV: Big-12?).