40 Acres Sports

Final Four? What Final Four? The national champs will be coming to a television set near you this Saturday at 6 p.m.

FSN Southwest will televise Texas’ spring football scrimmage at 6 p.m. Saturday. The game will be carried in many of FSN’s southern markets and by KDFI in Dallas. FSN will air a replay at 1:30 p.m. on April 5.

Don’t miss your first chance to see Colt McCoy, Jevan Snead, and the rest of the 2006 Texas Longhorns. Should be the best spring game in a long time, I’m as interested to see the second and third stringers as the guys who are starting.

(Source.)

Marcus has the inside shot for starting SS and Michael is one of the top DB’s in the nation.

I’m not sure I agree that Tucker’s decision is linked to Aldridge’s.

Trust me, Icy Hot should never go near that area.

PJ Tucker, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Daniel Gibson all say they’re coming back (for now)…

Sophomore forward LaMarcus Aldridge, sophomore guard Daniel Gibson and junior forward P.J. Tucker said they plan to come back to Texas next season, although Aldridge didn’t want to spend much time discussing it Saturday.

“As far as I know I’m coming back. But I’m not going to get into that right now,” Aldridge said.

Said Tucker, “I think we’re all coming back right now. I talked to LaMarcus and Daniel, and that’s what they told me.”

Said Gibson, “Right now, I feel like I’ll be back.”

Despite his inconsistency, Aldridge is almost surely a top 5 pick if he comes out this year. The NBA draft is all about potential and LaMarcus certainly has plenty of that. He’d likely improve his all-around game with one more year in college (and the weight room) but I can’t imagine turning down all that money and a chance at your dream career.

As for Gibson, his stock has dropped over the course of the last season and is probably an early second round pick right now. He doesn’t have the size to be an NBA shooting guard but his ball handling troubles lost him the point guard job this year. He definitely needs to spend the offseason working on becoming Texas’ point guard next year so that an NBA team will think about making him their point guard in the 2007 draft.

With Tucker, he’s NBA ready now but the NBA probably doesn’t know it. Just like Gibson, he’s too short for the position he’s best suited for. Listed at 6-foot-5 he’s about three inches too short to be an NBA power forward and an inch shorter than Charles Barkley. PJ is a fantastic basketball player but he’s no Barkley, an all-time great. Right now he’s a late second round pick, if his academics are in order than he’s certainly better served with one more year at UT. He’s not going to get any taller, but a Texas degree would give him an excellent fallback plan. Can he possibly improve his perimeter game and his NBA future with another season?

My guess, Aldridge goes and Tucker and Gibson stay.

Jason White’s hometown threatens to call the FBI because they couldn’t configure their own web server.

Kind of hard to claim a single isolated incident is sign of an epidemic.

LSU is the complete opposite of the West Virginia team Texas faced Friday night. [tag]LSU[/tag] isn’t a great three-point shooting team and the Mountaineers made their first two with less than ten seconds to go Friday. The Tigers win with their big men inside on offense and outstanding defense. Texas can’t let their shot blockers intimidate them and needs to feed inside early and often to get Glen Davis and Tyrus Thomas into foul trouble.

First Half

• Why isn’t the game in HD? They just announced that it had a sponsor for high def yet the picture clearly isn’t. Is it the local CBS affilliate’s fault?
• Okay now it’s fixed. Woohoo!
• Turnover by LSU leads to LaMarcus Aldridge nailing a jumper. Big guy starting out smooth again today.

LSU 0, Texas 3

• Another LSU turnover leads to easy layup for Kenton Paulino.
• Daniel Gibson misses two wide open threes but Brad Buckman nailed one of his own.
• Crap. PJ Tucker is hurt. Looks like it’s his left thumb. Mad scramble for the ball after a Texas turnover, then they steal it back while Tucker gets tangled up, and then Aldridge turns it over again. Wild play that ends up with Tucker holding his thumb sitting on the bench.

LSU 4, Texas 9

• Five minutes into the game and Gibson passes up an open shot. I know he’s not feeling it right now but he’s not off by much and needs to keep firing.
• LSU in a little bit of foul trouble. They seem to be a little out of control early, Texas needs to get up a littl e before they settle in.
• Texas offense is clunking them right now and looks awful on offense. LSU is on a ten point run.

LSU 12, Texas 9

• AJ Abrams nails the 3. He’s definitely been Texas’ most consistent the last few games.
• More terrible officiating. Tyrus Thomas first comes flying in over several guys backs trying to get the rebound. Then after Buckman grabs the board, Thomas literally winds up and hammers Buckman on the head right in the middle of open court while the ref is staring right at them. On what planet is that not a foul? The poor officiating this weekend has been almost as big of a story as the games.

LSU 14, Texas 15

• Aldridge is a little off, need to get him some easy shots and get him going again.
• Nice easy three from Gibson. I’m telling you, he hasn’t been hitting them but he’s been just barely off and seems ready to explode at any moment. Hopefully that shot gets him heated up.

LSU 19, Texas 22

• Four minutes left in the first half and Aldridge misses another. He’s been excellent of defense and the glass though.

LSU 19, Texas 22

• Dear POWERade. Please stop comparing your low-calorie water drink (POWERade Option) to Gatorade’s regular stuff. They have Propel Fitness Water and it has just ten calories as well. That’s like Diet Coke trying to show that they had fewer calories than regular Pepsi. Morons.
• Tie game with 78 seconds left in the half.
• I think they need to watch Thomas’ goal tending. Sure looked like he grabbed one of Buckman shots early earlier in the game and just now the ball appeared to still be sitting on the rim when he pulled down the rebound.

(more …)

Texas needs Tucker to continue what he’s been doing and Gibson to step up to keep winning.

We’re going to need every one of our big men to perform well today against LSU.