Texas A&M & Baseball In No Particular Order

Saturday October 25th, 2003

posted Sun 10/26/03 1:11am

Preview: Texas A&M vs. #19 Oklahoma St.

Sorry this is up so late, my computer wouldn't work properly until Sat. night....I promise I typed this before the game....

I'm not going to make this too long and bore you with comparative stats, because I don't think anyone really looks at them other than me.

OSU is going to be a tough team because they're extremely balanced when they have the ball. Their QB, Josh Fields is pretty good, but nothing compared to their WR Rashaun Woods. Woods is pretty much a stud and he's going to more than likely be a first round pick in the draft next spring. The player that gets left in Wood's shadow is their RB, Tatum Bell. He was last week's Big XII Player of the Week and he's probably going to get a lot of carries against the Ags, especially after how we played against the run last week at Nebraska, and against V-Tech, and against Utah.

Everyone is writing us off (even our school newspaper did a survey amongst the writers and 6 of the 7 polled picked us to lose) but I think we've got a shot. Anytime an opposing team comes into Kyle Field they're already at a disadvantage. I think that T-Murph will have a big day and step into the #1 Receiver roll quite nicely after Jamaar Taylor went down for the year. I also think that Jason Carter will have a nice game. I think that we're going to have to have some big plays early in order to set the tone, but with Reggie, T-Murph, J.C. and Courtney Lewis (our stud RB) that seems more possible than in recent years.

Bottom line, I think we'll win a close one somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-32ish....


Something to Keep in Mind

Although the Ags haven't had the stellar season that some felt we were capable of, there are several things to keep in mind.

The first thing is that we have the toughest schedule in the nation according to Coach Fran. Here is our schedule with rankings:

Date Team W/L Current Rank Peak Rank Rank at Time*
8/30 Arkansas St. W - - -
9/6 Utah W 23 23 -
9/18 V-Tech L 3 3 8
9/27 Pitt L - 11 19
10/4 texas tech L - 23 -
10/11 Baylor W - - -
10/18 Nebraska L 11 7 14
10/25 Oklahoma St. L 19 19 19
11/1 Kansas - - - -
11/8 Oklahoma - 1 1 -
11/15 Missouri - - 23 -
11/28 t.u. - 18 4 -
*rank at time is at the time we played them
**I used the ESPN/Coaches Poll for the rankings

Something that goes somewhat hand-in-hand with our difficult schedule is the caliber of players we have and will face. According to ESPN.com's Heisman Watch list we will face candidates #1, #2, #3, #4, & #7. That's not too shabby. Here's the Top-10 off their list:

Rank Name Pos. School Year
1 Jason White QB Oklahoma Sr.
2 Larry Fitzgerald WR Pitt So.
3 Kevin Jones RB Virginia Tech Jr.
4 B.J. Symons QB texas tech Sr
5 Cadillac Williams RB Auburn Jr
6 Eli Manning QB 'Ole Miss Sr
7 Bryan Randall QB Virginia Tech Jr
8 Phillip Rivers QB NC State Sr
9 David Greene QB Georgia Jr
10 John Navarre QB Michigan Sr

That list doesn't even include Roy Williams of Texas or Rashaun Woods of OSU or Jamaal Lord of Nebraska or Brad Smith of Mizzou or even Brandon Warfield from Utah (who is still averaging 118.4 ypg). It also doesn't even start to take into consideration the defenses we have faced....Nebraska (#3 in total defense, #7 in pass defense, & #23 in rush defense), OU (#4 in total defense, & #5 in pass defense), texas (#8 in pass defense), V-Tech (#23 in pass defense), or Utah (#24 in rush defense).


Friday October 24th, 2003

9:39am

I'm Back

I'm sorry about the lack of updates this week on the site...I had a huge midterm Finance test yesterday morning and I've been studying for that since I got the original Nebraska post up. I have added the final piece of the trip (coming back home) and you can check it out here. I'm planning on having the OSU game preview up before the game tomorrow; I'm just not sure if it'll be there when you wake up or noonish (when I wake up). I may not get to it at all though because I just found out that my brother has accepted my invitation to come up for the weekend and go to the game on Sat. I think I'm going to take him over to Northgate now that he's 18, just to let him see how most Aggies spend their weekends (it won't be too terribly exciting since neither of us drink, but it should still be fun). Amidst all of that we'll see if I get some free time....

While I haven't added a daily post, I have tweaked some things. I've rearranged the look of "Random Thoughts" and added a few new thoughts and I've updated the T-Murph link. Not much, but I really needed a good grade on this midterm, since I only have 3 very short papers, the midterm and the final to determine my fate in the class.

For those of you looking for World Series updates, you'll have to look else where because I just don't care about it. I'd like Pudge to get a ring and it'd be nice for Beckett to win (just b/c I played against him) but that's about it. This post season had the highest potential since my existence began and it all came crashing down.

I will say this....the umpires have stunk--bad....and Fox is even worse than the umps. For those of you who agree, check out Aaron's Baseball Blog and read Tuesday's post. He has once again hit the nail on the head so hard it's gone clean through the wood.


Ags Mourn

This past week, Texas A&M suffered a tremendous loss....Reveille VI was put to sleep. She was replaced in May of 2001 by Reveille VII after serving the school for 7 years .

Miss Rev had very bad arthritis and was epileptic and her caretaker felt it was best for her. Her burial ceremony will be in early November outside the Zone at Kyle Field where she will be placed alongside all the previous Revs. For more details, check out the Battallion article from earlier this week.


The Great Sack

For those of you who were paying attention, I had a paper due this past Tuesday for my finance class (it was one of the 3 short papers for the class that I mentioned earlier).

My professor had the deadline set for October 21st, but he was more than willing to accept them early (and kind of encouraged it so he wasn't swamped with grading). Anyways, every day he came to class with a big white envelope and asked if anyone had any contributions to the "Great Sack". He's a pretty funny guy. Well as the deadline trickled closer he would get one paper a day for about two weeks and then he got a couple more for a week or so and each time he took them he would say, "The Great Sack thanks you."

I would say that before this past Tuesday he had maybe 10 or 11 papers turned in out of about 90 students. Obviously when the due date came he was swamped with papers, but he still had the humor to tell everyone, "The Great Sack is plump today, very plump."

I guess that's not as funny to you all as it was to me, but I thought I'd share it with you regardless.


Wednesday October 22nd, 2003

2:24am; edited 10/23/03 @ 5:40pm

College Station to Lincoln to College Station

The good news is we made it back safely....the bad news is that we were slaughtered. Let's talk about the trip, then the game....

Friday October 17th, 2003
College Station, Tx to Concordia, KS
3:45pm-4:00am

Hunter came over to our apartment after he got out of class at about 3:20 and we packed up the Tahoe and were on the road by 3:45.

Our goal was to get about 3 hours from Lincoln before stopping so we could get to sleep and get up in time to finish the drive and not miss any of the game.

I started behind the wheel, and we were off for the Big D. We got to Dallas and hit I-35 towards Denton, Tx about 7ish and we hit some traffic. I'm not sure why there was so much traffic, but it set us back about 30 min. Once we got past Denton, it cleared out and we were off again.

After living in Texas my entire life, I'm still amazed how big our state is. Our estimated overall drive was between 12-14 hours and it took us about 1/3 of that just to get to Oklahoma.

Once we crossed into Oklahoma, we stopped to fill up with gas and the gas station we pulled into seemed to be full of what we imagined to be the stereotypical Okie. Since it was after 6pm, we had to prepay so we went inside. There were 3 cars at the gas station; a blue El Camino, a dark colored car, and our tan Tahoe (with an Aggie Flag sticking out the window). The guy behind the counter, for whatever reason, couldn't get it through his head we were filling up the big Tahoe with the flag...not the El Camino, and not the other car...the big tan Tahoe with the flag sticking out. We thought that was kinda funny. Anyways, Hunter took over behind the wheel at this point and we aimed towards Oklahoma City.

We passed through Norman, Ok (which is where OU is), just before hitting Oklahoma City. Once we passed through Ok. City, we were driving and Hunter was talking about something and Pat, out of no where says "That's the biggest cross I've ever seen." Hunter and I both were a bit confused, but when we looked out the window, there it was....on the side of the road....the biggest cross we had ever seen. It must of been 6 or 7 stories tall.

That was the highlight of Oklahoma.

About 25 minutes later we passed the exit for Stillwater, Ok which is where Oklahoma State is located (from the map, it looked to be about 10 miles east of I-35).

We stopped to fill up with gas again about 10 miles past the exit (it was about 11:30pm by now) and we met, quite possibly the dumbest fellow ever. He was wearing an OSU sweatshirt, and he came up to us and said something about playing us this weekend. Pat said, "I don't think so man." but the guy disagreed. Pat then told him we were headed to Lincoln, NE so if we were playing OSU, then we were gonna miss it.

When the fella went in to pay for the gas, Pat overheard the guy asking where Stillwater was and the girl he asked told him it was about 10 minutes south. Apparently that wasn't good enough for this guy because he asked the cashier (who told him the same thing) and then he asked Pat (who also told him the same thing).

Then when the guy came back outside, he now somehow thought we were from Nebraska and he said we spanked OSU a few weeks ago. At this point we just kind of agreed and got out of there.

I took over behind the wheel again about 15 minutes before we hit the Kansas border. We crossed into Kansas and we were starving because there was nothing open in Oklahoma whenever we tried to stop and eat. Pat and I saw a rest stop/McDonalds sign so we pulled off and ate. When we left the rest stop we accidentally went the wrong way out and were shot back onto the highway going south. We had to go 10 miles before we could turn around, so it cost us about 20 minutes round trip to get back to where we wanted to be.

There really wasn't anything exciting in Kansas, so we just drove for a while.

Right at 3am we arrived in Salina, KS (pronounced sal-I-na, not saleena). We didn't know how far we were from Lincoln so we stopped into a Best Western motel and asked the clerk. He said it was right at 3 hours, but if we could make it about 50 miles farther north we would be in Concordia, KS and then only be about 2 hrs. and 15 min. from our destination.

We followed the fella's advice and parked in a Motel 8 parking lot at 3:45am to sleep.

It was somewhat interesting sleeping 3 guys in a 5 person Tahoe, but we actually managed it and it was surprisingly comfortable....As in we were sound asleep by 4am....12 hours and 15 minutes after our departure.

Saturday October 18th, 2003
Concordia, KS to Lincoln, NE to Norman, OK
7am-Midnight

We awoke the sound of Hunter's surprisingly loud cell phone alarm only to find the Sonic, next door to the Motel 8, hopping with customers. Hunter manned the wheel, and we were off for Lincoln....and then 2 hours later, we arrived in Lincoln.

We decided to fill up with gas before the game so we could just hit the road afterwards. The tiny station we found was manned by a college aged guy from Alaska who compared his home state to Texas...or at least tried to. He was really nice though.

After filling up, we pulled across the street to a little diner and went in to see if they would let us just use the restrooms...and they did, so we freshened up (I did at least; brushed my teeth, put in my contacts, etc.) and we then set out for a place to park the vehicle.

We found a parking meter that didn't have a car in front of it, so we pulled in but we were afraid that we'd be towed because the meter was flashing something weird. Hunter asked a guy who was trying to scalp tickets and he was overly happy to help us figure out if we were breaking the law or not. He stopped 2 or 3 different people and we concluded that it was one hour parking only on game days, so we moved on. We found a $10 parking lot and decided not to risk missing any of the game by driving all over town any longer.

We started walking towards Memorial Stadium, and I couldn't believe the amount of red. Here at Texas A&M, we pride ourselves in our wearing of maroon. They put us to shame...there were thousands of red Nebraska jerseys ranging from #1 to #5 to #12 to just about any other number you can think of...there were people wearing red pants, red shoes, red shirt, red hat and had their face painted 1/2 white and 1/2 red. It was just nuts. My favorite was a kid who was sitting down the row from me. He must have been about 11 and he was completely decked out in his Husker uniform, pads and all. He didn't take the helmet off the entire game! Talk about redass!

Another thing that was cool was the tailgating. Sure, we tailgate here but it was nothing compared to the Husker fans. First of all, it was 10am. Second of all, there were 2 or 3 school buses painted red with Nebraska football helmets attached to the hoods and totally decked out with stuff. There was this one truck (it was like a small U-Haul) with a very interesting set-up. Instead of the back being only a storage room, the side panels split in the middle horizontally and became a table and an awning to keep the FULL BAR out of the sun. On top of that, they had a sweet sound system set up and it was just a happening place. It seemed that we were the only ones not doing a bit of Pregame tailgating.

When we got closer to the stadium, there was a kid (maybe 13 or 14 y.o.) and he said something like "Hi Texas Ass Monkeys". I admit I was a bit taken back, but I just ignored him. Within 2 seconds the couple in front of us turned to us and apologized for the kid and assured us that their fans are usually not like that. We found out soon enough....

We were about 50 yards from the stadium and there was another kid and he walked up to us and said, "Hi, welcome to Lincoln". I mean he must have been about 12 y.o., it was a bit refreshing. The ticket ladies were very nice and asked us about what Gig'em means and the lady serving drinks and pizza was nice and we chatted it up for a bit before we went to find our seats.

I'll admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the Aggie turnout. I estimated somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 to 2,000 Ags were in the same region as we were, which made me not feel so bad when we stood the whole game and when we were doing our yells. I was afraid we were going to annoy the Husker fans, but I don't think we did.

It was the 259th consecutive game Memorial Stadium has sold out, dating back to November 3rd, 1962. Over that time span they are 231-28 (that's a .892 W%age). Overall at Memorial Stadium they are 341-101-13 since 1923. Over their last 105 games at home, the Huskers are 100-5 (with 2 of those 5 coming during their terrible 2002 season).

The Game
Texas A&M 12 v. Nebraska 48

It wasn't a terrible game, even though the score would indicate it was. It actually would have been a great game if it weren't for the turnovers. Nebraska tied a school record forcing 8 Aggie turnovers (5 INTs and 3 fumbles).

Our defense really did play a pretty good game, but it's hard to stop a team who gets the ball consistently inside the red zone and can punch it in on 4 or 5 plays.

Offense

It was bad. It was worse than bad. #16 Reggie easily had the worst game of his career throwing 3 INTs and fumbling 2 times. He passed for only 77 yards on 7-of-19 and rushed for a team high 69 yards and was sacked once. His replacement, #18 Dustin Long, didn't fare much better throwing 8 passes and completing as many to Nebraska's defense as he did to our receivers (2 each). He had 32 yards on the day and was sacked twice. We totaled 109 passing yards, with #5 T-Murph leading the way with 3 catches for 30 yards.

Our running game wasn't much better. #16 Reggie led the way followed by #7 Jason Carter, coming out of that A-Back position, with 49 yards on 2 carries. #25 Courtney Lewis had only 9 carries for 21 yards and was kept out of the end zone for the first time this season.

As I just said, #7 Jason Carter had the breakout game we've been waiting for all year. He rushed for 49, he caught a pass for 23 and he returned 2 kickoffs for 113 yards (one of which was an 89-yard return for the Aggie's only TD of the day). He finished with 185 total yards.

Defense

We gave up 333 yards on the ground and 51 yards through the air, which was just about what I was expecting. I said earlier that we played pretty well, I should have said we played as well as I imagined we would. We did have 11 tackles for a loss and one sack, which was pretty impressive. #19 Jaxson Appel, our SS, led the team with 14 tackles. That's terrible for a team who ran the ball 68 of their 78 offensive plays. We've got to have some LBs and DLmen step up and make some plays.

Injuries

I'm not sure where our Preseason All-American #20 Cody Scates was, but man do we have a fella who's gonna make us not miss Cody quite as much next year. #30 Jacob Young punted the ball 5 times and averaged 45.6 yards per punt. That's not too shabby.

The worst news of the game and quite possibly the season came out yesterday. Sr. WR #2 Jamaar Taylor sustained an injury to his right knee and will miss the rest of the year. It was a terrible way to end his career here at A&M, especially since he was 36 yards away from breaking the all-time mark. He was 9 catches away from breaking the all-time receptions record as well. I wish Jamaar and his family the best of luck (I've met his mom several times and she's such a nice lady) and I hope things work out for you over time.

The Trek Back Home...

We hung around Lincoln, walking through campus (which is really nice) and making some sandwiches for lunch for about an hour before we hit the road.

Hunter started the drive, and I was asleep about 9 min. into the trip. Apparently along the way from Lincoln back to Concordia, there were a couple Aggies who were off the side of the road and the guys up front didn't know if they should stop or not to see if they were having car trouble. Well, it turns out that the Ags weren't broken down, they were just having a little post game tailgating....right off the side of the highway, sitting in their lawn chairs.

I woke up right when we were approaching Salina (about 3 hrs. after we left Lincoln). Hunter didn't feel like switching, so he just kept on truckin'. We made it to Wichita, KS and we wanted to eat while we watched G1 of the World Series so we stopped at a little Applebee's cause we figured if "you're eating good in the neighborhood" and the W.S. is on, you'd be watching it....right? Not right....we asked the hostess if they had the game on any of the TVs and her response was, "Everyone is enjoying Toy Story." Yes, the same Toy Story that came out 8 or 9 years ago. Needless to say, we left and just settled for listening to the game on the radio.

Honestly, there wasn't anything exciting on the way home. We stopped off at the huge cross to take a picture just so people would believe us, and we made it to Norman, OK right at midnight before Hunter decided to call it an evening.

We slept in another hotel parking lot and got up at 8 and Hunter took the reigns once more, so I went back to sleep and woke up in Fort Worth at about 10:30. Finally, I was able to convince Mr. Andretti to let me drive and he gave it up in Waco, so I drove the last hour and a half.

That's it for the trip, it was awesome and yes, it was worth 12 points....


Tuesday October 21st, 2003

1:00am

I'm back, but...

Hey yall, I'm back from my trip but I don't have time to post about it yet....I'll probably have it done by tomorrow....Until then, check out the next couple links, they don't have anything to do with Baseball or A&M, but I thought they were interesting or fun.....



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