TEXAS TECH 2008 BASEBALL: REQUIESCAT IN PACE.

Good afternoon West Texans and all you good, fine, friendly folks out there who wish you were . . .

2008 RED RAIDER BASEBALL LAID TO REST

The Trail of Tears known as this past baseball season ended on an up-note for Texas Tech Sunday taking down Baylor and their gaudy “championship gold” with the aid of a Roger Kieschnick farewell grand slam homer. It was a season that showed a smidge of improvement over last year, but perhaps more importantly revealed just how far down Tech’s overall talent level is and where it must get back to in order to compete in the Big 12.

Both head coach Larry Hays and head coach-in waiting Dan Spencer have addressed the talent-gap lately on SportsRadio 1340 and I can’t agree more. You look at the typical top Big 12 teams over the years and they’ve almost always had multiple guys with Major League talent in the line-up and usually one or two arms that were at least AA-caliber if not better. Tech was nowhere near that this year and it showed.

Getting guys like Ben Flora http://www.planostar.com/articles/2008/05/19/plano_star-courier/sports/41.txt out of Plano West will help. Of course you’ve got to hide him out from the MLB draft in a few weeks, but at least it’s a start. Here’s what his team did this weekend. http://www.planostar.com/articles/2008/05/19/plano_star-courier/sports/21.txt

HOW GOOD CAN TECH BE IN 2009????

Great question . . . we’ve seen teams go from near the bottom to winning titles in the Big 12 over the years. Can Tech assemble the talent to compete for a top spot for 2009? Ask me again after fall-ball. There’s just no way of knowing right now who’ll be on campus when it matters next year. You gotta think you lose Roger, heck, I’d advise him to go at this point, as well as Stewart. On the incoming signees, you just never know, so it’s a crap shoot.

WHAT WE DO KNOW . . .

I do know that I laugh out loud when I hear folks say or see folks write that it is time for Larry Hays to go and that Tech is soft for keeping him around. Gee, let’s see, if you fired Larry you’d want to replace him with an experienced coach that’s proven he can win at all levels, has championships on his resume and has also proven that he can win at a school that hasn’t and doesn’t throw a lot of money at the program. Hmm, sounds a lot like Larry Hays.

And that, my friends, is the difference in giving a guy like Hays a chance to turn it around and survive a few bad seasons vs. a guy that doesn’t have championships on his resume and hasn’t proven in the past that he or she can get it done. Hays has done it, has assembled the kind of staff you need to win in this league and has this program showing signs of being relevant again. Perhaps the people in charge at Tech also realize that during the past seven and eight years a lot of money and improvements earmarked for Baseball ended up funding Football’s projects. We can debate the merits of that, and I totally understand you’ve got to feed the Golden Goose or you’ll have no eggs, but Larry Hays was a team player during that time for Tech and I’d like to think those at the top remember that and we’ll be a team player for him right now.

Ok, now that baseball’s done, it’s just a few weeks to two-a-days start for football.

I’m going fishin’.

MORE LATER

HYATT

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