Our first Morning Wire of the new year. We hope everyone has had a great holiday season, and now we are barreling down to Spring as classes start back in about 2 weeks for TAMUC students. Before you know it, Softball season will be starting, as will outdoor track and field and hopefully we will see both Men’s and Women’s Squads back in the NCAA tournament this March, and of course, our second spring football game with David Bailiff at the helm.

Time to get to the latest news regarding Lion Athletics. Here we go.

Women’s Hoops-

Jason Burton’s picked up his 100th career win as a Head Coach over the weekend and the Lions went full steam ahead into this week as they picked up two huge conference wins. Thursday the Lions steamrolled Cameron by 22 where Burton picked up his 100th win and then the Lions torched Midwestern state by 37 points 107-70 to move to 13-0 and stay at 7th in the country. The Lions face a tough road trip this weekend as they travel to new LSC foe Texas A&M-International in Laredo Thursday night, and then follow that up with a Saturday tilt with Texas A&M-Kingsville in Kingsville. This season is looking very good right now, but the one thing that I see with this squad is this….FOCUS. They are focused on the next game, the next opponent and then moving on only when they have defeated that team.

Men’s Hoops-

The Lion Men pushed their record to 9-4 for the year with two big wins that went down to the wire this past weekend. They held on to defeat Cameron 73-69 and then went to Overtime to defeat a hot shooting Midwestern State team, 85-82. The Lion Men has been in slugfests like this pretty much the entire year and the good news is, the seem to be getting better at finishing it and pulling out wins. They will have tilts on the same days this upcoming week agains the same opponents as their Women counterparts. These games during the next month will be CRUCIAL games to win if the Lions want to make it to the tournament for the fourth straight season.

Lion Football-

Hat Tip Russell McLean for finding this information for us. The American Football Coaches Association and the NCAA released their annual “Incredibly early look at DII top ten football teams” for the following season. The Lions check in at number 7. Here is what the report said about the Lions-

”

NO. 7 TEXAS A&M-COMMERCE | 10-3 | DII QUARTERFINALS

New coaches, new quarterbacks, it just doesn’t seem to matter in Commerce. Quarterback Miklo Smalls, leading rusher Antonio Leali’ie’e and leading receiver Chance Cooper should all be back as is Dominque Ramsey who is a special do-it-all player. With Tarleton jumping to the FCS in 2020, that leaves one less team for the Lions to compete with in a usually stacked Lone Star Conference.”

Only thing I would dissent is on this article is that Tarleton is doing us a favor by leaving for Division I. Quite the contrary, we are doing them a favor by not playing them next year. (That is some trash talk for the good folks down in Stephenville).

Full Read-https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2020-01-02/college-football-rankings-early-dii-football-top-10-2020?amp&__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3Aza_GAjenXzRf00r-9UASAjwrGE4FITinB0eqfr9KO-6v_1PIlAjCziw