Monday Notes

We'll start with the somewhat fun items of the day. Joel Filani was nominated as the USA Today player of the week for week 10, with 8 catches for 212 yards and 3 touchdowns. The EN believes that the tortilla toss as the 11th best Big XII tradition, but notes that students have been removing bleacher seats and passing it around the stadium. That doesn't sound real constructive.

My favorite stat of the Baylor game: 6 penalties for 60 yards. Such a significant improvement over previous games, especially the UT game, where the personal fouls and other assorted penalties killed Texas Tech.

Don Williams writes a really nice article about the road ahead, a particularly difficult road. With OU on the road this week and a greatly improving OSU at home next week, the task seems daunting to have a winning record at the end of the year. We had folks from the Insight Bowl and the Independence Bowl on hand for the Baylor-Tech game, and it's a nice thought that we're being considered, but it should be far from everyone's mind. Interesting quote from Filani about how Baylor decided to cover Tech:

Filani said the Bears' cover-two and cover-three schemes made him think he could have a good game. "We knew the middle of the field and also the outside corners would be kind of open,'' he said, "so we just tried to take advantage of that. Also, Shannon ran the ball well, so that opened things up for everybody.''

The one item that I haven't seen mentioned, although that doesn't mean that I haven't missed it was that despite Hicks was held out of last weeks game, perhaps Leach thought that he should take the chance that Hicks would not be missed against Baylor, and that we would certainly need him against OU. OU's defense will cause several problems this weekend, not to mention the fact that OU will be seeking revenge for last year's game. The other part that really worries me is the fact that OU has the potential to run all over Tech and Tech did not get much practice against the run against Baylor. Leach had to take his chances, let's hope that he was right about that.

I hope everyone saw he half-time interview with Coach Leach where he was asked about the fact that Harrell has so many attempts in the first half and whether or not he was worried about Harrell's arm falling off. I will not get the quote even close to being right, but it was something to the effect of, "I didn't know he had thrown so many times. I guess we'll have to watch out for that in the second half. Have a happy half-time." Genius. Pure Genius.