Team Information
Location: Lubbock, Texas
Established: 1912
Enrollment: 40,332
Mascots: The Masked Rider
The second team from Texas Tech is Team Matador. We don’t know much about them yet but we will get up close and personal with them during the team interviews.
I’ve included a picture of the Texas Tech Masked Rider mascot, I loved seeing the rider pounding out onto the football field just before kick off, amazing how it gets the crowd fired up.
Anyway, to finish the story we stared on the Red Raider profile page…..
Based on the testing numbers the students told me, I think they would have taken the Highest LINPACK award at SC12 at the very least – they might have taken home the championship if they were good on the applications.
But it wasn’t meant to be…..their nodes ended up somewhere in Mexico due to a shipping snafu and the team was forced to use borrowed nodes (meaning un-optimized and unable to be overclocked) and the team limped over the finish line. But they’re back in the competition, which is great, we’ll see what they can do.
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.