percent of his first-serve points, backing up those fireballs with forehand blasts mixed with occasional off-speed backhands and even drop shots. Thiem never saw a break point.However, Socks similarity to Roddick also carried a price tag. It quickly morphed into pressure. It didnt help that Socks

HOUSTON -- Tom Herman began his media conference on the Monday after the Cougars 33-23 defeat of Oklahoma with a reference to the physical mismatches that his team might confront when it takes the field. Asked later to elaborate, Herman said the Cougars are smaller than half the teams in the Power 5.Did you see those running backs? he asked, referring to the Sooners Samaje Perine?(5-10, 235) and Joe Mixon (6-1, 226). Oh my! Are they not gorgeous human beings?And yet the Cougars beat Oklahoma the same way they have won 14 of 15 games under Herman. They are physical, a polite way of saying they hit their opponents in the mouth. Then they line up and do it again. It doesnt matter how many five-star recruits the Cougars see on the other side of the line.Turn on the Florida State film, Herman said, referring to Houstons 38-24 victory in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl last season.We train, hopefully harder than anybody in the country, Herman said. I dont have any metrics that say we do. Our goal is, train harder and more physical than any program in the country. ...?We like to think that we practice so hard that the games are easy.Herman, one of the sports youngest head coaches, has planted himself in its oldest verities. If you listen closely enough to his words, you might hear the mumble of Bear Bryant. But America doesnt celebrate smashmouth football quite the way it did when Woody Hayes stalked the sideline.The specter of CTE looms over the sport. Youth participation is declining because parents are scared. NFL players in the primes of their careers are walking away from the game. The league has curtailed contact in the offseason. Thud practices, where players hit but dont take anyone to the ground, are as common in college football as water breaks.Herman has little use for thud.I dont think you can ask anybody in any walk of life to do anything at a championship level without doing it over and over and over and over and over again in preparation, he said.Herman said he is frustrated by the beating that football has taken in the public discourse.When the President of the United States comes out and says, If I had boys, I wouldnt let them play tackle football, thats a big punch to the gut for our sport, Herman said.Herman is convinced that fewer kids in Pop Warner guarantees a diminished quality of play in college and pro football down the road.Yet, he is savvy enough to understand the political volatility of advocating for the benefits of contact at a time when football is fighting for its reputation as a safe sport.I hope youre not going to make me out to be this meatgrinder that doesnt care about kids safety, Herman said. We do. You go to Iowa and Alabama and Stanford, Im sure youre going to find the same amount of physicality at those places [as] Ohio State. Im not a butcher. I dont want you to make me out to be some heathen butcher.Equipment has made the game safer. So have rules changes. Herman is all for them. If research shows that the kickoff should be eliminated, you wont hear a squawk out of him. Herman is teaching the rugby-style tackle advocated by Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll.Yet the players who made it through August -- and, middle linebacker Matt Adams said, not all of them do -- receive a certificate congratulating them for enduring the hardest fall camp in college football. The Cougars suffered six concussions during preseason practice, which Herman said is within the range of what happens elsewhere.Asked to describe the physical nature of Cougar practices, Adams said, Its like beating your head against a wall for two and a half hours. The Cougars Tuesday practice is referred to inside the football building as Bloody Tuesday.That means theyll get after it, said strength coach Yancy McKnight, whose job it is to prepare the Cougars for what Herman demands of them. I know this: The first day we go full pads and we go to inside drill ....it is like game reps. It is nasty. It is physical. Its intense. Its as intense as any place Ive ever been at.That is how a team overcomes a physical mismatch.Measurable-wise, we wont be an Alabama or a Clemson, so theyll try to take advantage of that, safety Khalil Williams said. Thats when our physicality and training comes into play, and you take over.On the Sooners first snap of the second quarter Saturday, Perine caught a swing pass and turned upfield. Sophomore safety Garrett Davis, all 6-1, 200 pounds of him, gives up 35 pounds to Perine. Davis raced forward and launched himself into Perines body. Perines left shoulder, already banged up, took the brunt of the hit, and he didnt play much after that.Here a guy is, right at 200 pounds, a safety coming up and he aint going at the ankles, McKnight said. Hes going for the torso. That was a big momentum swing for our guys. At least from our sideline, you could feel a little different.Asked if football has to be coached the way he coaches, Herman said, I dont know that it has to, but its the one proven way so far.He is convinced that the work his players have done more than levels the playing field against the Oklahomas and Florida States and their five-star recruits.Said Herman: Its our edge. Cheap Wholesale Sneakers Free Shipping . Parker had 26 points and eight assists and San Antonio beat Toronto 112-99 Monday night. "We won that game because of Tony Parkers aggressiveness," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "His juice; his aggression all night long. Wholesale Shoes China . Just as Montreal was settling into the first full working week of a new year, the Impact announced the appointment of their new head coach. http://www.shoesonfire.ru/ . "Four now," Carl Gunnarsson told the Leaf Report proudly following a 5-2 victory over New York on Tuesday night, the clubs fifth straight at home. Cheap Shoes Stores Near Me . Just as Montreal was settling into the first full working week of a new year, the Impact announced the appointment of their new head coach. Discount Shoes Website . Vancouver Whitecaps and Toronto FC failed to make the postseason while Montreal Impact fell at the first hurdle losing heavily to Houston Dynamo in the Eastern Conference Knockout Round. Jack Sock is starting to make a habit of winning big matches, a newfound talent that may be ushering in a new era in American tennis.Sock, 24 years old and already the highest-ranking player from the U.S. at No. 24, upset No. 12 seed Richard Gasquet on Thursday at the ATP Paris Masters 1000 in a three-setter just shy of three hours. Socks explosive forehand, improved mobility and increasingly well-rounded game have enabled him to log some resounding wins since his early loss in the Olympic games in Rio.Since then, Sock has beaten Marin Cilic at the US Open (where the former champion was the No. 7 seed), Shanghai No. 5 seed and Wimbledon finalist Milos Raonic and German wunderkind Alexander Zverev. On Wednesday in Paris, he took out Dominic Thiem handily before his hard-fought win against Gasquet.For years now, Sock has been touted as the successor to Andy Roddick. Hes been hailed by some as the player who might accomplish the feat that has eluded John Isner, long the top-ranked U.S. player in the post-Roddick era: a Grand Slam triumph that might kick-start the American mens game.Like Roddick, the last U.S. Grand Slam champion, Sock is a native Nebraskan. His game also is anchored in an atomic forehand abetted by a powerful serve. Theres a physicality about Socks game that is reminiscent of Roddick at his most persuasive. At 6-foot-3, Sock is an inch taller, if not quite as broad-shouldered.Against Thiem, an Austrian 23-year-old who is every bit as much a muscular worker, Sock dominated in true Roddick-style, winning 91 percent of his first-serve points, backing up those fireballs with forehand blasts mixed with occasional off-speed backhands and even drop shots. Thiem never saw a break point.However, Socks similarity to Roddick also carried a price tag. It quickly morphed into pressure. It didnt help that Socks game was raw and his temperament unschooled. Thus Socks development was relatively slow. He also had to learn to live with the pressure. At times before this summer, it was intense.People love to do comparisons [to Roddick], Sock told USA Today in August. But you just have to brush it off and keep focusing on what youre doing, on trying to get better. No matter how well you do, theres always people who are going to hate or have better expectations.Sock had trouble distancing himself from other promising newcomers, including Ryan Harrison and Donald Young. They would all flare, then struggle. The only reliable American since 22010 has been that other late bloomer, Isner.dddddddddddd He hit a career high of No. 9 in 2012 and has been a top-20 player -- and the leading U.S. male -- for most of his career. But hes 31 years old now and ranked four places below Sock.Isner is 6-foot-10 and still dangerous, and he will remain so as long as that serve continues to lock and load. But he lives and dies by it. Isners size and long limbs impair his mobility. His game is poorly suited to the way tennis is played today, whereas Socks is right in tune with his times during what might be an era of transition on the ATP Tour.In October, Sock was a quarterfinalist at the Shanghai Masters 1000 and a finalist in Stockholm for the second year in a row. Hes 14-5 since the start of the US Open. Sock has been on fire in doubles as well. He partnered with Steve Johnson to earn the bronze medal at the Olympics in Rio and won the mixed-doubles gold medal with Bethanie Mattek-Sands. Since the US Open, Sock has made the final in all three doubles events hes played, winning in Shanghai and the Swiss Indoors.Those triumphs brought his record in doubles finals to 8-8 (including two Grand Slam titles), a mark Sock must wish he could duplicate in singles. Hes just 1-4 in tournament finals, with his lone win coming on the red clay of Houston in 2015. Thiem, by comparison, has four tournament wins -- and thats just this year.All those doubles wins, though, foster positive energy for Sock. As he said after he won the Wimbledon doubles title with Vasek Pospisil in 2014, Any match you win, especially in Grand Slams, playing in the second week can only help your confidence in all aspects of tennis.Doubles, as John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova once shouted from the rooftops, isnt merely a confidence-booster. It also helps hone your game. It can be especially useful for todays under-25 pros, who were trained with a heavy emphasis on groundstrokes, at the expense of the net game. In Stockholm, one key to Socks win over Zverev was his creative use of slice and sharp angles, stuff straight out of the doubles playbook.But Sock has redoubled his focus on singles this year. With some interesting fellow countrymen such as?Taylor Fritz,?Frances Tiafoe?and Jared Donaldson coming on fast, theres never been a better time for Sock to step into those big shoes left by Roddick. ' ' '