October 02, 2003
The result of the Pittsburgh game was very disappointing for everyone. One of the coaches referred to the game better than I could ever phrase it. He said, "We took dead aim at our own foot and shot it off." This week we've really tried to work on eliminating our own stupid mistakes. Coach Fran won't tolerate these problems, and he's finding ways to alleviate our frustrations, helping us to focus harder than ever.
One positive coming out of the game is that I really feel like the offensive line really improved as a unit. Every offensive lineman that played in the game graded out at a winning percentage, for the first time this season. Coach Helduser has been harping on how the o-line needs to set the pace for the offense and lead it in setting a physical attitude for the game. As an offensive line, we accomplished that by having 95 knock down blocks between the six of us. (A knock down block is knocking someone down by either a pancake or a chop block.) Hopefully our unit will only continue to get better as the season progresses.
Well, it's Texas Tech week, and there's so many things I can say about this game, Lubbock, and their fans. Some things are probably best left unsaid, however. For the past four years this game has had something unusual wrapped around it. In 1999 they knocked us out of our national ranking. In 2000, their fans spray painted our campus the night before the game (Coach Slocum made sure that we knew about the graffiti as soon as we woke up the day of the game), and in 2001 after defeating us they decided to relocate their goal post 100 yards to the section where our families and friends were. Thanks to Stacy Jones' dad, Buster Scates, Gamble's uncle, and Mr. McKinney, quite a few of their students regretted it. And of course, who can forget the offensive shoot-out of 2002? With the outcomes of the past few years, it's no doubt that this game is huge for us.
This week, some of the older guys have tried our best to prepare the younger guys who have never been in that kind of atmosphere. We really want our team to be able to focus through any kind of adversity that may come our way. For those of you making your way to Lubbock, remember to act like AGGIES, be safe, and BEAT THE HELL OUTTA OF TEXAS TECH!!!!