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And I don't mean they pushed him up and back and he turned it around at the end of the row. He steered it in zigzag fashion to maximize the players' time spent pushing through the sand. I mean this was s-s-s-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-w-w-w-w and p-a-a-a-instaking work.

Not sure if this punitive for being late to something or if these guys actually volunteered for the duty. But there was some serious building of leg muscles going on.

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And, come to think of it, Leach said, the scout-team defense had been lousy, too. Up-downs for them as well.

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Fowler needed that, because Carona had been the better of the two each of the previous two practices.

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One thing to be stressed here is it's not a position switch. Sesay remains a defensive end, but they want to see what he can do at both. Sesay says he's fine with it. In fact, over a week ago, he had mentioned that wherever they wanted to play him -- DE or DT -- was fine with him. He feels like he can do either.

During the team period, Sesay was part of a second-team front four that had Daniel Howard and Sandy Riley at end and Richard Jones at the other tackle.

Riley just keeps making plays, and defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill acknowledged after practice that he's ahead of Brandon Sharpe based on what they've seen the first two weeks of camp.]]> http://www.lubbockonline.net/blogs/rr_don/index.php?entry=entry080816-182118
--Those sitting out today included IR Detron Lewis and DE McKinner Dixon. Lewis was doing conditioning work. Dixon's Friday practice ended early with him favoring his right knee, so figure it's related to that.

--Mike Crabtree ran alongside Edward Britton as the No. 1 deep pairing on kickoff-return work. Lewis' being out might have had something to do with that. But coaches are proceeding with the idea that getting the ball in Crabtree's hands another two or three times a game via kick return might not be a bad thing.

--S Jordy Rowland was back in action today. He had bit of a scare Friday, taking a poke in the eye as he came up in run support. He was tended to on the side for the last 15 minutes of Friday's workout, but again, returned to the fray today.

--Defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill was frustrated during today's team period. The last few plays of team, the defense was in disarray -- players not getting calls to each other, players being in the wrong position, telling each other they needed to communicate better. Though it wasn't a scrimmage, McNeill yelled timeout to the offensive coaches and gathered his guys around him.
I don't think Mike Leach had planned to end the workout at that point -- probably a few plays later -- but in any event, it concluded on that note.

--Actually, it didn't conclude on that note. In the daily, game-ending field goal situation, Donnie Carona was good from 44 yards and Cory Fowler missed wide right. That's two days in a row that Carona's had the better of the competition. Fowler missed a couple from 40 and in on Friday.

--Players, coaches, the fans who showed up to Jones Stadium ... everybody got a break from the weather finally. Conditions were overcast with a temperature in the low 70s for today's 1:30 p.m. workout. And hey. It more or less stayed that way the whole time. None of this clouds burning off, followed by sweltering heat.
And the really good thing is, before I left home, I surfed over to the Weather Channel and saw highs forecast in the 70s for the next four days.

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Ruffin McNeill was giving Sam Fehoko all the tough love Fehoko could take during the inside running drill. McNeill wasn't pleased with Fehoko being misaligned and yelled at him more than once, "Your way might work! My way will work!'' And .. "I need you to play!'' The DC has gotten after Fehoko pretty good this week. He jumped on him the other day for lining up too deep and letting a running play come to him.

Anyhow, back to quotes of the day.

After Brent Nickerson got beat deep by Mike Crabtree, cornerbacks coach Brian Mitchell had this for Nickerson: "Grab him, trip him, bite him, something.''

And after OLB Julius Howard got into the right position to make another play, McNeill pleasantly chimed in. "Isn't it easier when we work on it? I don't yell. I'm happy. My blood pressure's down. I'm bragging on you. Good work, Julius.''

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Seeing Rowland outside the locker room after practice, looks like he'll be OK. And he needs to be. Though guys who walk on from little towns sometimes get overlooked, Rowland's worked his way up and can play a significant role this season. He's a second-team safety and a first-unit guy when the Raiders go to a six-DB package.

DE McKinner Dixon also didn't finish the team period. Looks like his right knee's bothering him again. He was on the bench with it iced toward the end of practice. That's the troublesome knee that caused Dixon to drop his weight down to 250.


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Interesting in that it's the second time this week that two prominent players have gotten into it in a little different fashion than the typical pushing and shoving and "fighting" that goes on all the time in scrimmage settings. Mike Crabtree and Bront Bird got hot at each other one day this week, both on the field and then an hour or more later going up the tunnel after practice.

Mike Leach acted unconcerned by tempers flaring the day of the Crabtree/Bird incident.

Team chemistry was a strength of last year's club and will have to be again for Tech to live up to its billing. Maybe these guys are just tired of looking at each other after the 12th day in a row of practice. ]]> http://www.lubbockonline.net/blogs/rr_don/index.php?entry=entry080815-202402
The reasoning: After tonight, coaches are dropping the 8 p.m. team meeting that they've had nightly throughout practices. In turn, the earlier practice times Saturday and Sunday will give the players a longer night off and more recovery time.
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The scrimmage was only 30 plays (29 actually), with Taylor Potts getting 15 snaps and Graham Harrell 14 snaps. The offense was sharp, sharp, sharp. Potts' group moved the ball from the offense's 40 down inside the 5-yard line, but then his 15-play sequence was up.

Harrell led the offense to three touchdowns -- a four-play series capped by a 24-yard scoring pass to Tramain Swindall, a five-play drive capped by a 17-yard scoring pass to Mike Crabtree and a five-play march capped by a 9-yard touchdown run from Baron Batch. They were all 60-yard drives, having started at the minus-40.

Some signicant things to note:
--The first-team defense wasn't in for any of the scoring. In fact, the touchdown pass to Swindall came with third-team defensive guys on the field.

--The defense just started re-installing substitution packages on Tuesday. Defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill used sub packages on just three or four snaps in the scrimmage. So, in essence, the first-team offense was having its way against backups running basic stuff.

--The most significant thing about the offense is that they showed the 40-second play clock that college is adopting this season shouldn't be a factor. In fact, it might well work to the benefit of the Tech offense. Graham Harrell was snapping the ball with 8 and 10 and 12 seconds left on the play clock, and they were never in danger of a delay of game. They ran no-huddle the whole time, and kept the rapid tempo that Mike Leach likes.

Some teams are putting in a no-huddle offense package, thinking they might need it with the clock changes. Tech has used the no-huddle for years, so there's little to no adjustment for this team, particularly one that has 10 returning starters and a senior quarterback.

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Texas Tech has sold at least 43,000 tickets for all seven of its home games, according to Dave Welsh, assistant athletic director for ticket operations.
As of Tuesday afternoon, tickets sold were: Aug. 30, Eastern Washington, 44,000; Sept. 13, SMU, 47,500; Sept. 20, Massachusetts, 49,000; Oct. 11, Nebraska, 49,000; Nov. 1, Texas, 53,000; Nov. 8, Oklahoma State, 44,000; Nov. 29, Baylor, 43,500.
Tech’s annual “Take a Kid to the Game’’ promotion is in conjunction with the SMU game. The annual Family Weekend and Fellowship of Christian Athletes Day is in conjunction with the Massachusetts game, and the Nebraska game is on homecoming weekend.
Tech’s season ticket sales are at 41,173, breaking the record of 40,430 set in 2005.
Welsh said only 585 season-ticket packages remain. Those are priced at $220 in Sections 117 and 121 on the east side of Jones AT&T Stadium and $300 in Sections 9, 102 and 108 on the west side of the stadium.
Because of the record sales, Welsh said, the only remaining tickets for the Texas game are those available as season tickets or 37 that may be purchased as a part of a two-game mini-pack.
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"He's supposed to come back,'' Leach said. "He's going to go tend to something -- a funeral or something like that -- and then be back. I haven't seen him, but didn't expect him for a couple of days.''

Leach said it's his understanding that Reid is to return Thursday.]]> http://www.lubbockonline.net/blogs/rr_don/index.php?entry=entry080812-005512
My impression is many Tech fans had been holding their breath and hoping for the good news that they got on Dixon. Thing is, Mike Leach didn't exactly give McKinner a hug and welcome him back.

I'm trying not to put the same quotes in two places, but you might want to check out the Monday Red Raider Notebook elsewhere on this site. If Dixon is going to make an impact for the Raiders this season, he's going to have to work his way out of Leach's doghouse to do it.


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--Leong missed a couple of catchable passes during 7-on-7, though a few plays after he missed the second while trying to twist his body, Leong bounced back and caught a TD pass from Potts.

--Adam James made the best catch I saw all day, this one in the 11-on-11 team period. Graham Harrell threw a pass high over the middle, and James had to leave his feet and extend to pull it in. The play went for 27 yards. James got bumped up in the pecking order Sunday because Eric Morris was out. It looks like he's going to be hard to keep off the field. He has pretty good hands, pretty good speed and pretty good toughness. Late in the spring, he was playing with a shoulder separation, but still going out there and doing the job.

--Julius Howard hadn't really caught my eye much in the past week after he was just everywhere during spring practices. But Howard made quite a few plays today. In 7-on-7, Victor Hunter hit a receiver just as a pass arrived, the ball popped into the air, and Howard intercepted it. Good awareness. In the goal-line portion of 7-on-7, he broke up one of Harrell's passes for Mike Crabtree. Then in 11-on-11, I had him down for being in on at least four tackles.

--Tech generally closes out the team period with a few plays of simulated goal-line situation with the football snapped from the 3. A few notable things from there: Detron Lewis locked up CB Taylor Charbonnet, and the block played a big part in Shannon Woods' getting into the end zone as he came around right end. Woods scored again on the next play, this time up the middle. Next snap, DE Brandon Williams drew a lot of cheers from his defensive mates for stonewalling a to his side. On the last of six plays, RB Baron Batch ran it in behind big OG Jake Johnson. Line coach Matt Moore came in and slapped five with Johnson, telling him it was much better than some lapse he'd had earlier.





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Hayes and Tech WR coach Dennis Simmons both are from Memphis, Tenn., which is where Hayes was found dead early Sunday afternoon.

Simmons said he knows Hayes' daughter, well enough that he would telephone condolences, although he no longer had a good telephone number.

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McNeill yelled out that it would be a 15-yard penalty in a real game, and he didn't drop the subject.

"Tackle the way we tackle! None of that horse-collar crap!,'' McNeill screamed. "Be smart! Be smart!''

Just thought many Tech fans would find that interesting. Tech's propensity for penalties has been a polarizing issue throughout Mike Leach's tenure. I've covered the subject more than once in stories. McNeill says they don't like penalties, nor do they look the other way. (Players do the body rolls on Sunday night for flags they've incurred the day before.) But they don't want players to go passive if they harp on penalties too much. ("It's not a contact sport. It's a collision sport,'' McNeill once told me when we talking about the penalties issue.

The Raiders are always one of the most penalized teams in the nation. Their penalty-yardage average in 2007 (71.7 per game) was fifth-highest in Divison I-AA.

But they'll get their butt chewed if they try a horse-collar tackle. I know. I saw it myself today.



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He said he was generally pleased with the week's first five practices, but thought the team showed "a ridiculous lack of toughness'' Saturday. Leach said he and his coaches deserve the blame for that.

This is how he explained his dissatisfaction with the workout:

"I thought it was inconsistent from start to finish. Sometimes offense would do very little and play very weakly, sometimes defense would, and it just traded back and forth. Long story short, as coaches and players, we did a poor job of doing our jobs. There's guys with frowny, tired expressions on their face. That can’t be tolerated. I tolerated way too much of that. We’re a team that's got to do our job and finish. We didn't do that today.''

Sunday's practice is still at 3:30 p.m. ... at least as everyone prepared for bed Saturday. Leach said he and his staff will go over any adjustments to the schedule that are deemed necessary this morning.

"Certainly, if we have to double up practices to get our work done with regard to focus and our ability to push through things, we won't hesitate,'' he said. "Nobody's comfort's going to get in the way of what we need to do and what's important in regard to that.''

With that said, I'll be surprised if any two-a-day practices are added. The Tech staff feels it's very important to save players' legs and be fresh when the season opener rolls around.

And it's just less than three weeks away, ya know.




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Mike Leach ripped pretty much the entire team during the huddle-up after the 11-on-11 team period. Told the offense they had just gone through the motions, then turned to the defense and asked why they let freshman RB Harrison Jeffers stick to them so many times.

Leach didn't put it as delicately as I did. Actually, it qualified as the (get ready for the cliche here) profanity-laced tirade. After the tirade, there were extra sprints and body rolls. When the players and the assistants dispersed back into position drills, you sort of wondered if Leach was going to do the workout over from the start. But it did end after the position drills.

College football analyst Craig James was on hand today and told me that Leach was right on. Speaking from his experience as a former player, he said there are workouts that you're tempted to just try to get through without your best effort, and he said Saturday's workout looked like one of those. He saw what Leach saw, guys not really going all-out.

No interviews were granted. No players, no coaches, not even Leach himself. He said he didn't coach well enough to talk to the media.

Luckily, I had plenty of notes and stuff stockpiled from the last night or two.]]>