I'm totally numb. It really is a shock. I talked to him while he was on the recruiting trail with Texas Tech, and there were no obvious (physical) signs of anything going wrong.

I just talked to him while he was on the recruiting trail for Texas Tech, and obviously there were no signs of anything that would go wrong. We just lost a really good friend. He's got a great family in Rhonda, Sterling and Aaron. Rhonda is a very strong woman, and I can imagine she is handling this very well. Whatever well would mean in this case, but I know she is a strong woman.

I've talked to him here and there and he's always been nice to me. It's just a shock something like this would happen.

Blaze a New Trail

The recruiting trail never ends for us. Once we get recruits for this season, we start looking for guys for the next season. It's a continuous beat and at this level it's all about recruiting big players to come in and play for you.

When it started here, we wanted to create a tradition. We had a bunch of enthusiastic athletes, but we never quite built a sustained thing. We had some success in the 1980s, but it went sour again. For the last few years we've had a team that was expected to win.