Texas Tech Monday Morning Notes - Happy Birthday Captain Leach Edition

It gives me great pleasure to wish both Captain Mike Leach and myself a Happy Birthday today. I find it no coincidence that the Captain and I share the same birthdate and was quite worried, in what seems like years, but was only a month, that the Captain would be leaving Lubbock for smoother seas. Alas, that time has passed and we have moved onward and upward to bigger and better things.

From the entire DTN crew, we wish you a Happy Birthday and I hope you enjoy wome Wynton Marsalis improvising Happy Birthday (the Captain seems like a Jazz/Marsalis sort of guy to me):

Spring Previews

CFN's Pete Fiutak previews the Big 12 teams heading into spring and has this to say about your Red Raiders:

The most important position to watch is . . . Quarterback. So who gets to be the newest national statistical star? Taylor Potts was a good recruit a few years ago and has been around long enough to be able to hit the ground running. However, he won’t have Crabtree to throw to. Detron Lewis has the makings of a No. 1 target, while Edward Britton and Lyle Leong are two of the good targets who should be able to do more with more responsibility.

Spring attitude . . . Don’t accept anything less than another double-digit win season. The program has to take on the attitude that it’s one of the regular players in the Big 12 title race, and it’ll get time to rebuild before the finishing kick. There are only two road games in the first eight, at Houston and Nebraska, to go along with the nasty games at Texas, at Oklahoma State, and against Oklahoma.

Fiutak also asks if the Big 12 was overrated last year but also compiles a few lists (who doesn't love a list?) and Taylor Potts is the top player, according to Fiutak, that needs a big spring and thinks the Red Raiders finish 6th in 2009.

All-Big 12 Team

The All-Big 12 Men's Basketball Awards were released and sophomore guard John Roberson and senior guard Alan Voskuil were honorable mention. I was sorta hoping that Voskuil would make the third team or Lewandowski would make the Big 12 All-Rookie Team, but it just didn't happen, and rightfully so.

Red Raiders Lose to #24 Oregon St.

*Click on the score for boxscore.

Texas Tech 6, Oregon State 9

Here's the lead sentence from the recap from yesterday's loss to Oregon State:

A meltdown by the Texas Tech bullpen in the seventh spelled doom for the Red Raiders as No. 24 Oregon State rallied for four runs and held on for a 9-6 win on Sunday afternoon at the Palm Springs Invitational.

Let's hope that playing closer to home will help this squad and this team was able to learn a little about each other on this very long road trip. Robert Kilcrease (3.0 IP; 6 H; 5 ER; 1 BB; 2 SO) got the start for Texas Tech and seemed to struggle to get people out. And yes, the bullpen did struggle, especially Jordan Stern (0.1 IP; 0 H; 2 ER; 2 BB; 0 SO), who earned the loss but Ben Flora (0.0 IP; 0 H; 1 ER) and Brian Cloud (2.0 IP; 1 H; 1 ER; 1 BB; 3 SO) also allowed late runs to cross the plate late.

The Red Raiders managed 12 hits for the day, led by Joey Kenworthy (3-5) and Chris Richburg (1-4; 3 RBI) who hit his 5th homerun of the year.