Following Up - Better Late Than Never

Sorry for the delay in getting another post up, but contrary to common attitudes in the Aggie Family right now, I did not jump out of a tall building.  I’ve simply been tied up with personal matters and work took its toll on me over the past few weeks. 

First out of the shoot this week:  Aggie Women Roundballers, ranked No. 4 in Athlon's Top 25.  These players will be getting some serious coverage this coming season – including national coverage and a Big Monday game.  Women Basketball Media Notes Speaking of roundballers, A'Quonesia Franklin recently got some props from the Sacramento Bee.  She played behind Sacramento’s co-captain, but her promising future was duly noted.  Sacramento was knocked off by San Antonio Silver Stars and her old teammate Morenike Atunrase.  An excellent write up from the department discusses their  seasons.  This weekend, the Silver Spurs’ run for a title was ended after being swept by the Detroit Shock.   We’ll see how these ladies play next year, but I’m expecting them to step it up some.  They’re just too good.

Next up, soccer.   The Aggies have been strong at least is futbol so far.  Since my last post, they’ve:  beat Cal (1-0) (scoring only the 5^th goal allowed by Cal until that point); beat Rice (2-1);  tied the sips (0-0), beat the Bears (1-0); beat No. 10 OSU (2-1), and managed to take possession of first place (shared with CU) with a beat down of OU (5-0).   Kelly Dyer is still killing as the keeper and in fact has won Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week two weeks running – something no other Aggie has done.  The Ags take on Nebraska and Iowa State this weekend.  NU seems spotty, but could be dangerous as they managed to defeat the sips (and then dropped a game to Baylor).   Iowa State has been less than impressive so far so the Ags should prevail in this home game.

The Athletic Department has a nice write up over cross country from the Texas A&M Invitational.    The Aggie Men came in first out of a field of 13.  This was the competition debut for Shadrack Songok , a Kenyan and transfer from A&M Corpus and he won the 8,000 meter race with a 24.16 (4.52 mile average).  The Aggie Men sweep the top 4 places coming in 1-2-3-4 with the other scorer coming in at 12 for a total of 22 points.   The second place team, Stephen F. Austin was far behind with 90 points.  The Aggie Women were not as impressive and finished 5^th with 134 points.  This put them behind the sips at 101, Rice at 64, SMU at 60 and Baylor at 32.  

Another nice write up is up concerning the Notre Dame Invitational.  The Men finished third, with Songok putting in 2^nd place performance.   Florida State was first with 81 points and Tulsa was second with 126 points  and the Aggies third with 136 points.  (I explain scoring below if you’re curious.)  This was a huge improvement over the prior year finish of 13^th.  The Women may have some work to do as they came in 20^th out of 23 teams, a drop for 16 out of 21 teams from the prior year.

How in the heck do you score in Cross Country?  Just in case you don’t know, a XC team runs with 7 runners, 5 of which can score.  A runner is given the point for their finishing position with first being worth 1 point, second being worth 2 points (well, we’re Aggies, but we get the pattern).  The goal is to score as low as possible.    In the event of a tie, you see where the No. 6 runners came in to break the tie.   Simple.

I’m out.  Good luck to all the Aggie Teams this weekend.