Team Information
Location: Lubbock, Texas
Established: 1912
Enrollment: 40,332
Mascots: The Masked Rider
This is the third year that Texas Tech has fielded two teams: Team Matador and Team Red Raider. The goal for each of the teams is to, of course, win the overall championship. However, there’s a lot to be said for winning The Battle for Lubbock and beating their cross-campus rivals, right? In 2023, Team Matador finished third overall, took home the Bronze Medal, and topped the seventh place Red Raider team. This was sweet revenge for what happened in 2022, when the roles were reversed.
So heading into the 2024 competition, each team has one victory vs. their TTU rival. What’s going to happen in this year? Who will come out on top?
Like team Red Raider, the Matadors have a compact team with three members, all Computer Science majors, but configured as two juniors and one senior. However, one of their teammates participated in the 2023 Winter Classic, which may give the Matadors a slight advantage. Time will tell.
2024 Matador Team Roster:
"My name is Ian De Vries, and I'm a junior studying Computer Science at Texas Tech University. I enjoy browsing used bookstores and finding really old books. In the future, I'd like to be employed as a software engineer at a company where I can make the most positive impact. Currently, I am proficient in Python and the C programming language."
"Hello, my name is Jonathan McPherson, and I am a Junior at Texas Tech University who is pursuing a Computer Science degree and an Electrical Engineering minor. My hobbies include: D&D, Video Games, Soccer, Programming, and ECE Projects. I just have a passion for computers. My technical skills mostly fall under programming languages I've learned such as: Java, Javascript, C, C++, C#, and Python. This year I've made a theme for myself to be application. I want to take my skills and apply them to more projects to expand my horizons while I learn more and see how much I've learned. In the future I would my career future to take me to a place where I can work on computers and possibly EE components, which took me to this competition to understand computers at their base level and scaling them all the way up to clusters."
"My name is Nicholas Anderson, I am a Senior at Texas Tech university, dual majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. My interests are obviously CS and Math, but also Martial Arts. I enjoy learning new and challenging things, and I feel like that reflects in my interests. Academically, I hope to make it into a good PhD program once I finish my undergraduate career and move into either research on artificial intelligence or algorithm efficiency in complex simulations. Once I finish up my schooling I hope to continue doing research, but I have not made a decision yet on where I would prefer to grow my career. All I know is I want the research I am doing to affect other people's lives, even if I do not get to witness it."
Faculty Advisors/Coaches
- Michael Beebe
2023 Winter Classic
From left to right: Ryan Lee, Nicholas Anderson, Yoo min (David) Park, Yash Sharma, Isaac Doggett, and Caleb Canales.
"My name is Yoo min Park and I am one of the members of the Team Matadors for the 2023 Winter Student Cluster Competition.
A couple of things about me, I am a junior at Texas Tech University studying Computer Science and I have a huge interest in technology as well as learning new things. I do not have much experience with Linux or HPC but I am very excited about joining and learning from this experience."
2022 Competition Highlights
2022 Matador Team Roster:
- Adam Rusaw
- Braden Ross
- Samuel O Adetunji
- Stephen Devaney
Faculty Advisors/Coaches
- Dr. Yong Chen
- Misha Ahmadian
Texas Tech Matadors/Red Raiders Dinner – the Sequel: In the second video, we find the team at “Torchy’s Tacos”, another fine Lubbock institution. This place has a hilarious menu, including entries dubbed “Trailer Park”, “Tipsy Chick”, “Tokyo Drifter”, and the ever popular “MoFaux.” With the Trailer Park taco, there’s a “Make it Trashy” option that substitutes queso for lettuce. The team and I bantered about their meals, the competition standings, and what was coming up in a fun filled video. Check it out.
Texas Tech Matadors/Red Raiders Meal Night #1: this was pretty cool, the team manager, the Mighty Misha Ahmadian, got both teams together not once, but twice for meals events. Their first bread-breaking took place at the “One Guy From Italy” Italian restaurant in Lubbock, TX.
What really made me smile was obvious it was that the teams were having a good time together. During this first meal, I shared the ORNL final results with them, which were pretty good. The Matadors scored 95% and the Red Raiders took home a perfect 100%. During the video, I passed judgement on their meal choices in an even-handed way, handing out plaudits for the meat-oriented selections and expressing doubt about a buffalo cheese and chicken pizza and Margharita pizza selection
Texas Tech Matador Update: This was a very consistent team, typically nailing down fourth or fifth place in every task. Through talking with them, you can see that they’re improving and growing stronger as the competition marches on. During this call, I gave them their Oak Ridge results (95%), which pleased them despite the fact that four teams scored 100% on this task. We explored student career aspirations, with most of the students already having their immediate futures mapped out with internships, school, or full-time positions in areas as diverse as automotive and financial services. I prove once again that my short-term memory is shot as I mix them up with students from the other TTU team.
Texas Tech University – Team Matador: Texas Tech is a first time entrant into the Winter Classic cluster competitions and, as is typical for Texas, they’re going big with two teams – the Matadors and the Red Raiders. Throughout the call, I do my best to stir up a bitter rivalry between the two teams. The Matadors grabbed fourth place in both LINPACK and HPCG, which is when we recorded this interview. Right now, a disappointing result on the HPC Pop Quiz set them back, hopefully temporarily, to sixth place overall – four slits behind their chief rivals the Red Raiders. We finish out our conversation with Team Matador with some Texas food talk, Bucky’s chat, and the promise of free snacks for their team meetings.