We finally reach the end of spring football this week. The final practices are Tuesday and Thursday. It does kind of seem like this spring has taken longer than usual. Technically, this spring is going to touch three different months.
Obviously, everybody took spring break week off (March 9-15) before coming back on March 16. Still, with two practices remaining, I think there are a couple of things to be taken from this kind of schedule.
For one, I've said that Baylor's coaches intentionally set it up this way so they could really set the game plan for the evaluation period that begins on April 15. Naturally, the coaches can evaluate as much footage on more 2016, 2017 and 2018 recruits, break down every film that was taken from the spring and start setting the agenda for August.
I know there are some of you out there who wonder why Baylor started this early and felt that it may have been too soon considering that there were several positions that needed more leg work before the spring started including a couple of wide receivers, mike linebacker and getting a handle of looking at youth in the secondary.
I guess everybody can have their take and have a point. So here are mine.
>If Baylor doesn't blow the Cotton Bowl to Michigan State, I think there's a later start to the spring. But I think the coaching staff and players were so miffed at what happened New Year's Day at AT&T Stadium that they wanted to get the bad taste out of their mouths and start looking ahead to 2015 as soon as possible. A later start wouldn't have impacted DE Shawn Oakman (wrist), safety Orion Stewart (shoulder) and Ryan Reid (hernia) and each one's ability to return to the field. In any offseason type of schedule, anyone with a significant injury is considered out. There's just too much to lose if they return with the possibility of making things worse. Look at defensive back Xavien Howard. He bruises a bone in his foot at Friday Night Lights and he's done. If this was a game week, he would play. There's no point playing him. The staff knows what he can do.
>I don't think this would have been so much of an issue had the weather not been so tricky with snow, ice and sleet between late February and early March. Obviously, the weather that time of year can be so up in the air. And really, the March 4 snowfall was the fourth latest in the history of Texas. In fact, all of this was. When you are in late February you're usually in the all clear for the winter precipitation. This year just happened to be the exception. The Allison Indoor Practice facility kept things on track but there is more benefit of being able to practice outdoors.
When the depth chart is going to be released, here are the positions that will be the ones to watch:
>MLB - I think you're starter is going to be Grant Campbell. I originally wrote Aiavion Edwards but something just told me no.
>NB - This is still going to be Travon Blanchard but as you have seen Patrick Levels will get time.
>4th WR - What a decision, your three starters are probably going to be Corey Coleman, K.D. Cannon and Jay Lee. Even though he's struggled to stay healthy, I'm going to lean to Davion Hall just because he's more of a known quantity.
>Second team OL -That's going to be interesting because there's a chance someone in the rotation didn't spend the spring with Baylor - Navarro's Mo Porter.
Really, there isn't going to be a lot of drama with this roster. How the younger guys fill the depth chart for the secondary is going to be a question of who exactly fits where. It's going to be a combination of Chance Waz, Verkedrick Vaughns. Terrence Singleton has to be there somewhere doesn't he?
***
I'm finally getting some help - officially.
By now, you've seen Matt Clare's name sprinkled on this site for the better part of the last several weeks.
Starting Wednesday, Clare will be joining the SicEmSports team. When I evaluated what I needed to replace Jake, I told you all that I wanted us to be better in recruiting. We're doing OK right now. But we need to do better.
I looked at other candidates and read some copy of what people do. Quite frankly, I kept coming back to Matt because not only is he passionate about covering recruiting, he's an excellent reporter. By now, his work both in word and on video has demonstrated to you that he wants to be excellent at this.
His goal is to be another Jason Howell as a regional analyst. I want to help him get there.
I realize that when it comes to these sites, everybody wants a "one of their own" to be involved because they all feel the same connection. I get that. I understand it. Over time, there can be a fit to that. Matt's background is Texas Tech and he still does some work for that site.
But what you will see and what you have seen is professionalism. The integrity of this site remains firm.
Of course, it's not unprecedented for someone from a different alma mater to cover somebody else. Before I made this announcement, I took the time to visit with Jake and several valued subscribers regarding this. To a person, they never expressed any concern with it because they had faith we would keep taking this site in the right direction. Matt's sole purpose is to football recruiting.
I'm having a blast doing this. I know Stephen has had fun with it. And let's face it with Baylor recruiting starting to take on a national persona you need the best arrows in your quiver. Matt is based in Houston and has connections everywhere. No doubt, you've seen Baylor's rise cause an increase in competition. That benefits everybody. Everybody needs to be pushed.
So if Baylor can accept Texas Tech grad Art Briles as its head coach (I think that's been working out OK), I think you'll see that Matt will do an excellent job.
As you have read time and time again, don't judge this site on its words. Judge it by its actions.
***
Time goes on, and I have to think that wisdom overrides emotion because maybe we all understand the bigger picture in life. When you're married and have children, those are your first priority and sometimes Baylor winning in the last seconds or losing a tight one just doesn't compare to your son winning that second grade free throw shooting contest.
Where I'm going with this is that when you are a fan of your team and your team loses, you go over everything that went wrong that led to the loss. It's almost as if the opponent didn't exist. We sometimes forget that there's another team on the field or court and it wants to win as badly. I go over this because I thought a little more about Baylor's stunning 57-56 loss to Georgia State in the NCAA tournament.
Yes Baylor helped give this game away with bad turnovers that led to points. But Georgia State needed to do something in order to win. NBA-bound R.J. Hunter still had to make a 30-foot shot with 2.6 seconds to play. If that thing misses, everybody is saying Baylor survived and did enough to win. Sometimes, you just get beat. It's as simple as that.
That even struck me again about Kentucky beating Notre Dame in the NCAA Midwest Final, 68-66, to keep the perfect season dream alive and advance to the Final Four. To me it seemed like most of the immediate postgame talk was what Notre Dame didn't do. Why didn't the Irish ever double Karl-Anthony Towns? Why isn't there somebody out on Aaron Harrison?
But Kentucky still had to do something like make its last nine field goal attempts. If the Wildcats go 7-9 down the stretch, they lose. They didn't.
Our teams make us emotional and think with a clouded brain. That's natural. It's just sometimes better to remember with the same goal in mind.
***
Either I'm getting old or the sophistication of training for high school recruits has reached such a different level, that its' hard to understand. At the Rivals Camp series in Dallas (Cedar Hill), players like Euless Trinity's Chris Daniels, South Grand Prairie's Jeffrey Okudah and Houston MacArthur's Isaiah Chambers have become so chiseled you would swear they're already ready for college.
Well maybe they could have played in college in this kind of condition about 10-15 years ago. But that's how much strength and conditioning has changed.
And Baylor is right in the middle of competing for all three of these recruits. I'll have a little more on Chambers, but I can tell you the more I talk to him the more I get the sense Baylor can win this recruiting battle. You're just going to have to wait.
***
I had forgotten how enjoyable watching these James Bond movies can be. It always seems to work out for 007 by the slimmest of margins doesn't it? But that's what makes these movies a great getaway.
One of my channels had a Bond marathon going over the weekend. Somehow I got sucked into them.
I have watched only one of the Daniel Craig versions in Casino Royale. In my youth, I was in the Roger Moore era and really enjoyed The Spy Who Loved Me (Moonraker was a disaster). I was too young for Sean Connery but have seen them. I had never seen George Lazenby's only appearance in On her Majesty's Secret Service until over the weekend. I never liked Timothy Dalton. He played with too hard of an edge. Pierce Brosnan did fine but I think the expectations for him were too high.
There's no doubt the best Bond is Connery. But my favorite Bond movie is Live and Let Die.
***
OK, let's take care of the other sports:
>A tough loss for the Lady Bears against Notre Dame in the Oklahoma City Regional Final, 77-68. But if you win the Big 12 regular season and conference tournament championships and go 33-4, you'd have a hard time being upset about that.
>Trayvon Bromell's wind aided 9.90 at the Texas Relays is beyond words.
> The second-ranked Baylor men's tennis team improved to 16-3 overall and 9-1 at home by shutting out Incarnate Word, 7-0, and No. 73 UT Arlington, 7-0, Sunday at the Hurd Tennis Center.
> The Baylor equestrian team took home its first Big 12 championship since 2010 with an 11-8 win over Kansas State in the finals Saturday at Turning Point Ranch in Springtown. Baylor fell 3-2 in fences, but tied in the reining event to trail just 5-4 at the halfway point. But, the Bears took a convincing 4-1 win in flat to take an 8-6 lead.
> The Baylor women's golf team won a second consecutive match against a team ranked among the nation's top five teams on Sunday at the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic. The Lady Bears beat No. 3 South Carolina to finish in fifth place overall at the tournament, following Saturday's win over No. 4 UCLA.
> The bookend games of the three-game series between No. 13 Baylor (24-7, 2-1) and Oklahoma State were pitcher's duels, and OSU took the edge in a 1-0 win Sunday at Getterman Stadium to avoid the Big 12 series sweep.
> The seventh-ranked Baylor women's tennis team blanked Iowa State, 4-0, Sunday at the Ames Racquet and Fitness Center. Baylor improved to 19-4 overall and 5-0 in Big 12 play, while Iowa State fell to 7-11 on the season and 2-4 in league action.
***
And finally, from the random jukebox, we honor Baylor's latest offer to Chicagoland safety Kenny Lyke with Ol Blue Eyes singing about that very place,
This post was edited on 3/30 11:49 PM by K Lonnquist
Obviously, everybody took spring break week off (March 9-15) before coming back on March 16. Still, with two practices remaining, I think there are a couple of things to be taken from this kind of schedule.
For one, I've said that Baylor's coaches intentionally set it up this way so they could really set the game plan for the evaluation period that begins on April 15. Naturally, the coaches can evaluate as much footage on more 2016, 2017 and 2018 recruits, break down every film that was taken from the spring and start setting the agenda for August.
I know there are some of you out there who wonder why Baylor started this early and felt that it may have been too soon considering that there were several positions that needed more leg work before the spring started including a couple of wide receivers, mike linebacker and getting a handle of looking at youth in the secondary.
I guess everybody can have their take and have a point. So here are mine.
>If Baylor doesn't blow the Cotton Bowl to Michigan State, I think there's a later start to the spring. But I think the coaching staff and players were so miffed at what happened New Year's Day at AT&T Stadium that they wanted to get the bad taste out of their mouths and start looking ahead to 2015 as soon as possible. A later start wouldn't have impacted DE Shawn Oakman (wrist), safety Orion Stewart (shoulder) and Ryan Reid (hernia) and each one's ability to return to the field. In any offseason type of schedule, anyone with a significant injury is considered out. There's just too much to lose if they return with the possibility of making things worse. Look at defensive back Xavien Howard. He bruises a bone in his foot at Friday Night Lights and he's done. If this was a game week, he would play. There's no point playing him. The staff knows what he can do.
>I don't think this would have been so much of an issue had the weather not been so tricky with snow, ice and sleet between late February and early March. Obviously, the weather that time of year can be so up in the air. And really, the March 4 snowfall was the fourth latest in the history of Texas. In fact, all of this was. When you are in late February you're usually in the all clear for the winter precipitation. This year just happened to be the exception. The Allison Indoor Practice facility kept things on track but there is more benefit of being able to practice outdoors.
When the depth chart is going to be released, here are the positions that will be the ones to watch:
>MLB - I think you're starter is going to be Grant Campbell. I originally wrote Aiavion Edwards but something just told me no.
>NB - This is still going to be Travon Blanchard but as you have seen Patrick Levels will get time.
>4th WR - What a decision, your three starters are probably going to be Corey Coleman, K.D. Cannon and Jay Lee. Even though he's struggled to stay healthy, I'm going to lean to Davion Hall just because he's more of a known quantity.
>Second team OL -That's going to be interesting because there's a chance someone in the rotation didn't spend the spring with Baylor - Navarro's Mo Porter.
Really, there isn't going to be a lot of drama with this roster. How the younger guys fill the depth chart for the secondary is going to be a question of who exactly fits where. It's going to be a combination of Chance Waz, Verkedrick Vaughns. Terrence Singleton has to be there somewhere doesn't he?
***
I'm finally getting some help - officially.
By now, you've seen Matt Clare's name sprinkled on this site for the better part of the last several weeks.
Starting Wednesday, Clare will be joining the SicEmSports team. When I evaluated what I needed to replace Jake, I told you all that I wanted us to be better in recruiting. We're doing OK right now. But we need to do better.
I looked at other candidates and read some copy of what people do. Quite frankly, I kept coming back to Matt because not only is he passionate about covering recruiting, he's an excellent reporter. By now, his work both in word and on video has demonstrated to you that he wants to be excellent at this.
His goal is to be another Jason Howell as a regional analyst. I want to help him get there.
I realize that when it comes to these sites, everybody wants a "one of their own" to be involved because they all feel the same connection. I get that. I understand it. Over time, there can be a fit to that. Matt's background is Texas Tech and he still does some work for that site.
But what you will see and what you have seen is professionalism. The integrity of this site remains firm.
Of course, it's not unprecedented for someone from a different alma mater to cover somebody else. Before I made this announcement, I took the time to visit with Jake and several valued subscribers regarding this. To a person, they never expressed any concern with it because they had faith we would keep taking this site in the right direction. Matt's sole purpose is to football recruiting.
I'm having a blast doing this. I know Stephen has had fun with it. And let's face it with Baylor recruiting starting to take on a national persona you need the best arrows in your quiver. Matt is based in Houston and has connections everywhere. No doubt, you've seen Baylor's rise cause an increase in competition. That benefits everybody. Everybody needs to be pushed.
So if Baylor can accept Texas Tech grad Art Briles as its head coach (I think that's been working out OK), I think you'll see that Matt will do an excellent job.
As you have read time and time again, don't judge this site on its words. Judge it by its actions.
***
Time goes on, and I have to think that wisdom overrides emotion because maybe we all understand the bigger picture in life. When you're married and have children, those are your first priority and sometimes Baylor winning in the last seconds or losing a tight one just doesn't compare to your son winning that second grade free throw shooting contest.
Where I'm going with this is that when you are a fan of your team and your team loses, you go over everything that went wrong that led to the loss. It's almost as if the opponent didn't exist. We sometimes forget that there's another team on the field or court and it wants to win as badly. I go over this because I thought a little more about Baylor's stunning 57-56 loss to Georgia State in the NCAA tournament.
Yes Baylor helped give this game away with bad turnovers that led to points. But Georgia State needed to do something in order to win. NBA-bound R.J. Hunter still had to make a 30-foot shot with 2.6 seconds to play. If that thing misses, everybody is saying Baylor survived and did enough to win. Sometimes, you just get beat. It's as simple as that.
That even struck me again about Kentucky beating Notre Dame in the NCAA Midwest Final, 68-66, to keep the perfect season dream alive and advance to the Final Four. To me it seemed like most of the immediate postgame talk was what Notre Dame didn't do. Why didn't the Irish ever double Karl-Anthony Towns? Why isn't there somebody out on Aaron Harrison?
But Kentucky still had to do something like make its last nine field goal attempts. If the Wildcats go 7-9 down the stretch, they lose. They didn't.
Our teams make us emotional and think with a clouded brain. That's natural. It's just sometimes better to remember with the same goal in mind.
***
Either I'm getting old or the sophistication of training for high school recruits has reached such a different level, that its' hard to understand. At the Rivals Camp series in Dallas (Cedar Hill), players like Euless Trinity's Chris Daniels, South Grand Prairie's Jeffrey Okudah and Houston MacArthur's Isaiah Chambers have become so chiseled you would swear they're already ready for college.
Well maybe they could have played in college in this kind of condition about 10-15 years ago. But that's how much strength and conditioning has changed.
And Baylor is right in the middle of competing for all three of these recruits. I'll have a little more on Chambers, but I can tell you the more I talk to him the more I get the sense Baylor can win this recruiting battle. You're just going to have to wait.
***
I had forgotten how enjoyable watching these James Bond movies can be. It always seems to work out for 007 by the slimmest of margins doesn't it? But that's what makes these movies a great getaway.
One of my channels had a Bond marathon going over the weekend. Somehow I got sucked into them.
I have watched only one of the Daniel Craig versions in Casino Royale. In my youth, I was in the Roger Moore era and really enjoyed The Spy Who Loved Me (Moonraker was a disaster). I was too young for Sean Connery but have seen them. I had never seen George Lazenby's only appearance in On her Majesty's Secret Service until over the weekend. I never liked Timothy Dalton. He played with too hard of an edge. Pierce Brosnan did fine but I think the expectations for him were too high.
There's no doubt the best Bond is Connery. But my favorite Bond movie is Live and Let Die.
***
OK, let's take care of the other sports:
>A tough loss for the Lady Bears against Notre Dame in the Oklahoma City Regional Final, 77-68. But if you win the Big 12 regular season and conference tournament championships and go 33-4, you'd have a hard time being upset about that.
>Trayvon Bromell's wind aided 9.90 at the Texas Relays is beyond words.
> The second-ranked Baylor men's tennis team improved to 16-3 overall and 9-1 at home by shutting out Incarnate Word, 7-0, and No. 73 UT Arlington, 7-0, Sunday at the Hurd Tennis Center.
> The Baylor equestrian team took home its first Big 12 championship since 2010 with an 11-8 win over Kansas State in the finals Saturday at Turning Point Ranch in Springtown. Baylor fell 3-2 in fences, but tied in the reining event to trail just 5-4 at the halfway point. But, the Bears took a convincing 4-1 win in flat to take an 8-6 lead.
> The Baylor women's golf team won a second consecutive match against a team ranked among the nation's top five teams on Sunday at the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic. The Lady Bears beat No. 3 South Carolina to finish in fifth place overall at the tournament, following Saturday's win over No. 4 UCLA.
> The bookend games of the three-game series between No. 13 Baylor (24-7, 2-1) and Oklahoma State were pitcher's duels, and OSU took the edge in a 1-0 win Sunday at Getterman Stadium to avoid the Big 12 series sweep.
> The seventh-ranked Baylor women's tennis team blanked Iowa State, 4-0, Sunday at the Ames Racquet and Fitness Center. Baylor improved to 19-4 overall and 5-0 in Big 12 play, while Iowa State fell to 7-11 on the season and 2-4 in league action.
***
And finally, from the random jukebox, we honor Baylor's latest offer to Chicagoland safety Kenny Lyke with Ol Blue Eyes singing about that very place,
This post was edited on 3/30 11:49 PM by K Lonnquist
