Last year we had ZERO guys taken in the draft. This year we had five, one of them was even on the first day!

Martellus Bennett TE 2 (61) Dallas

Cody Wallace OC 4 (107) San Francisco

Red Bryant DT 4 (121) Seattle

Chris Harrington DE 6 (185) Arizona

Corey Clark OT 7 (234) San Diego

Game three of our series with Missouri was tied in 2-2 in the bottom of the 10th. We were looking for our FIFTH (!!) conference sweep; they were looking to salvage a road series. Then this happened...Kyle Colligan hit a walk-off homer. Things are looking very exciting.

No need for Olsen magic tonight. We whipped Missouri 15-0. Barret Loux struck out five in six innings and only allowed two hits in the shutout win. Catcher Kevin Gonzalez lead the offense with three hits and a career high five RBI. Luke Anders did well, despite his poor timing. Anders had two one-run homers, yet managed to stranded five runners.

The four-letter-network has a gave some ink to the turn around job Childress has done in College Station.

Our baseball team finished off a 7-run come back in the 9th inning when Missouri pitcher Ryan Allen balked in the winning run (pictured below). I bet Mr. Allen feels really stupid.

Thanks to Wildmen03 for the picture.

Josh Carter has declared for the NBA draft, but has not hired an agent.

Turge is "not a big fan of [underclassmen going pro]", but would never "hold the kid back" so he is going to do the "homework so that we know where he stands." That is a pretty easy homework assignment. Don't get me wrong, I think Josh is a great player, but he would be lucky to get a late-late-late second round bid.

This is a lot like what Joe did last year; declaring so he can work out for NBA teams, attend the NBA pre-draft camp and talk with NBA officials. Josh thinks “It’s a win-win situation for me. If I go to the NBA, it will fulfill a life-long dream; if not, I get to come back and play for the university I love.”

I like the move. Its like having a guy play for you in a contract year.

We went 2-3 in no-hitters this week. Megan Gibson threw her first career no-hitter against Kansas a day after being named the D-1 National Player of the Week. Then two games later, freshman Rhiannon Kliesing pitched her first no-hitter AND hit her first home run against South West Texas State. Kliesing has really stepped up since Amanda Scarborough's career-end foot injury; she has a record of 11-4 and an ERA of 1.37.

Here are some clips of Trent Hunter, a 3-star DB headed to College Station this fall.

Hunter shows good speed and... brace yourself... the ability to tackle. Sounds funny to say, but tackling is not something our defense does well.

Thanks to Bobby for submitting the clip.

It turns out that the 2-11 beat down we suffered against Rice was just a bump in the road. After the loss we bounced back and added Baylor to our long list (4) of conference sweeps. The wins were good enough to bump us to 6 in the national polls and Travis Starling was named the Big 12 pitcher of the week. Starling had both a win and a save against Baylor.

UConn and Tennessee may have a lot more women playing in the WNBA than we have, but how many of their former players are ass models?
D’Nika Romero stopped playing a few years ago to pursue her true passion...

"Forget the zone read. Build the offense around Mike Goodson." Brilliant.
Shermi's makeover is still a "work in progress", but the shift from a QB-run-heavy offense to a RB-run-heavy offense looked pretty good in this year's Maroon and White scrimmage. Goodson got the rock eight times and ran for 58 yards in the first series. In last year's scrimmage, it took Goodson a quarter to get the ball eight times. Shermi thought that "Goodson played extremely well there in the first quarter and part of the second. He showed his talent and we didn't do everything we can do with him or we wanted to do with him. We can give him the ball in the backfield or the check down."

Two things we would like to see, and didn't, were 1) some indication of who will be under center this season, and 2) a dominate defense. Neither McGee or Johnson did much to put themselves ahead of the other, and it turns out that you need good players to have a good defense; "the days of the Wrecking Crew might not return until 2009."

The result of the scrimmage was 14-3, but this year's game was different than previous years. "Texas A&M" played the "Aggies" in a traditional game for only two quarters, then Shermi put his team in different situations: 2 min drill, goal line, etc.

Stephen McGee loves coaches (in fact, his dad was a coach)...
As you probably remember, McGee was the only person who had confidence in Fran until the end... and maybe even a little after that. Thankfully he has moved on. When asked about how things have been with Shermi, McGee said that, "It's been great(1). He is doing a great(2) job of trying to get everybody to buy into what he wants to do here. There's a lot of offensive stuff. He's doing a great(3) job. He's a great(4) football coach and he's all business. He's getting everybody to do their job."

4 greats. Impressive.

A fight broke out at our last full-pads practice. According to reports, things started with defensive end Michael Bennett mixing it up with the offense, and eventually led to a majority of the players on both sides of the ball brawling.

Sherman made sure the players remembered that "we don't need that bull crap" by making them run 50-yard sprints up and down the field. Even while running, Shermie continued to berate the players. "We've got soft players. If you want to be average, then transfer."

BOTH Morenike Atunrase AND A’Quonesia Franklin were selected in the WNBA Draft. The Atlanta Dream picked up Atunrase in the 2nd round (24th overall) and promptly traded to her to the San Antonio Silver Stars. In the next round (38th overall) the Sacramento Monarchs selected Franklin. This is the first time in school history that two players were selected in the same draft. In fact, we only had two other players in school history to get drafted: Toccara Williams and Jaynetta Saunders.

You know you're program is good when you have players going pro. You also know you're program is good when assistant coaches are being tapped to be head coaches at other schools. Associate head coach Vic Schaefer is interviewing for the head spot at North Texas. Schaefer has been with Blair for over a decade.

I don't get it.

DeAndre Jordan is "testing the waters" of the NBA draft. Why would you want this guy on an NBA team? He can't even play on a college team. I must know NOTHING about basketball. Isn't the NBA harder than college? Why would you expect that a guy who cannot play in college would be good in the NBA?

Well, I do know that there are really bad NBA general mangers out there (read Isiah Thomas of the New York Knicks). You would never seen the Spurs go for a guy like this.

First the tanned one..

Now the bald one?
Will Kansas be the first school to have two coaches quit after taking their team to the NCAA finals (I did not look this up, but surely this has never happened to a school more than once before)?

[UPDATE]

An astute anonymous poster pointed out that KU has already had two coaches leave after coaching in the finals. Larry Brown bailed for the NBA after winning the 1988 NCAA championship. So the list should be... 1) carpet bagger, 2) tanned one and 3) bald one.

Here is a link to the video of the fight the Larry Brown started while playing at UNC. Good stuff. I like the two coaches in suits slugging it out at midcourt (28 second mark).

Okay basketball is over.... :(

Our baseball ball team has hit its stride; winning 10 in a row, including a 6 game sweep of all Big 12 teams in the state of Kansas. The streak was good enough to put us in the top 10 a third of the national polls (we are 11 in USA Today/ESPN poll and No. 12 in Collegiate Baseball Newspaper's poll, jerks). The day after those polls were released we traveled to Houston and took the #19 Cougar to the woodshed in a 13-6 win. 11 of our 13 were scored with two outs, which, according to Childress is "pretty amazing." I agree Rob; pretty pretty pretty amazing.

If you think baseball is good, softball is even better. We are ranked 7th nationally in 100 percent of the polls, and are undefeated in conference play. Undefeated is not the whole story: our average margin of victory in conference games is 6 (6!), and Megan Gibson has been named Big 12 pitcher of the week 5 times (we are only in the 8th week of conference play) and national player of the week once. Can you say All American? Megan can.

Other fun news:

Morenike Atunrase was invited to attend the 2008 WNBA Draft. In four years Atunrase had 176 blocks, making her A&M's all-time leading shot blocker, and sixth in the Big 12. This year she averaged 10.3 points, 4.3 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 1.1 blocks and 1.4 steals. A’Quonesia Franklin is also listed as a potential WNBA Draft pick.

Former men's basketball assistant Buzz Williams is now Marquette's head coach after Tom Crean left for the mess that cheater-boy Sampson left Indiana. I am pretty sure I saw Buzz at a convince store outside of Dallas at 4AM (driving to the Cotton Bowl after gambling in Louisiana, there was a lot of loosing on that trip). He seemed nice.

Turge is in SA for the Final Four, but he might now even watch the games. Too painful. "I'm not over [the loss to UCLA]. I'm not handling that one very well. I've had some tough losses, but that may be the toughest."

I think I will start paying attention to baseball and softball soon...

Mike Goodson is expected back next week after a scary neck injury last week.

Guards A'Quonesia Franklin and Takia Starks made the AP All-American honorable mention list.