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TEMPE, Ariz. -- On the first play of the fourth quarter Saturday, Patrick Mahomes II, the most prolific passer in college football, faced his biggest moment of the young season.Third-and-7 from the Texas Tech 28. The Red Raiders were facing a 10-point deficit against Arizona State. If the junior quarterback Mahomes were to show the results of his progression over the previous nine months after he quit baseball to focus on his future, this was likely his time.Mahomes showed patience out of the quarter break. With the game clock stopped, he barked an audible and motioned for movement from multiple receivers. Then the snap, and Mahomes backpedaled, changing directions. His footwork fell out of rhythm.He felt pressure and heaved the ball deep to his left, far past receiver Derrick Willies. Mahomes next throw on the ensuing possession was intercepted, his first pick of the season.He was trying to make the 21-point pass, Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury said. It doesnt exist.The Sun Devils Kalen Ballage scored his seventh touchdown of the game four seconds later. With that, it was essentially over, and Mahomes stood right where he started this season: as a monster of a QB talent, perhaps the most gifted player in the Big 12, but apparently without a supporting cast to support his championship aspirations.This is the conundrum for the Red Raiders and Mahomes, unique because of his athleticism and diverse skills compared to the Tech quarterbacks who preceded him but unable yet to break through in red-letter games. Mahomes is 0-6 against ranked opponents and 9-10 as a starter. Since his second career start as a true freshman in November 2014 -- after he left with a head injury two weeks prior in a loss to Texas -- Mahomes ranks No. 1 nationally with 6,995 passing yards and second with 59 touchdown passes.Over that time, defensively, Texas Tech has allowed 543 yards per game (worst in the FBS), 42.9 points per game and a whopping 50.2 percent third-down completion rate. Three times in its past 12 games, Tech has scored 50 points and lost. On Saturday in Tempe, from midway through the first quarter until nine minutes remained in its 68-55 win, ASU scored touchdowns on eight of nine drives and faced just nine third downs, of which it converted eight.They had a bad game, but I think youll see a lot of improvement, Mahomes said of the Tech defense after its first road test of 2016. We have all the faith in them. We know that theyre going to make the big stops.Doubt Mahomes at your own risk, but it isnt always the best idea.Mahomes considered quitting the sport before his junior year of high school in Whitehouse, Texas. So said his mom, Randi Mahomes, and dad, Pat Mahomes, a former major league relief pitcher who played 11 seasons with six teams.Both parents were on board. Randi, with whom Patrick lived after his parents divorced more than a decade ago, has always struggled to watch him play football, she said. Pat wondered why his son, so distinguished in other sports, wanted to compete for the quarterback position.Why are you messing around? Pat said at Sun Devil Stadium before the game, in recalling his 2012 conversation with Patrick. Youre special in basketball. Youre special in baseball. Why are you playing this other sport? For what reason?Father and son went to the University of Texas for a camp, Pat said. The coaches liked Patrick as a safety.He said, Dad, I can play quarterback, Pat said. I said, I know you can play quarterback, son, but nobody else thinks you can.Patrick said he mulled the decision to quit the game but never took it to his coaches or friends.I had the potential to be a high draft pick in baseball, said the younger Mahomes, a promising right-handed pitcher in the mold of his father. I had to decide if I really wanted to play football or try to get drafted in the first or second round.Ultimately, Patrick won the job at Whitehouse in the fall of 2012 and committed to Texas Tech in April 2013. In the 2013-14 offseason, incumbent starter Baker Mayfield left Tech for Oklahoma, and Michael Brewer transferred to Virginia Tech. That left the Red Raiders with Davis Webb as a sophomore and Mahomes behind him.Again, the elder Mahomes said he questioned his son, suggesting he might have to sit for two or three years. But Patrick proved him wrong. He replaced an ailing Webb late in 2014. In Mahomes fourth start, he threw for 598 yards and six touchdowns in a 48-46 loss to Baylor. Last year, he won the job late in camp over Webb, who transferred to Cal.In that freshman season, even as he prepared to play baseball at Tech in the spring of 2015, Mahomes said, he fell hard for football.I love how hard it is to be good, he said. I love being challenged. I love the drive it takes to succeed and having the ball in my hands with the chance to win games.Since that discovery, Mahomes leadership has not wavered.Its his team, Tech receiver Dylan Cantrell said. Its his offense. Everybody knows that.Mahomes 4,653 passing yards as a sophomore ranked fourth nationally. He leads the nation as the lone quarterback to top 1,000 yards through two games this year, after he threw for 540 and five touchdowns Saturday at ASU.He would trade all the stats for more wins.I want to be that first quarterback to bring back a Big 12 championship to this university, Mahomes said. They bleed Texas Tech football here, and they really do want a championship. All their quarterbacks have had a lot of stats, but they havent got that.Patrick told his dad before the season that he would lead Tech to the Big 12 title this year, the elder Mahomes said. Doubt him?I dont doubt anything he says anymore, Pat Mahomes said. Anything hes ever told me, hes done. So Im all in. I believe hes going to win the Big 12.In his first two years at Tech, teammates had a nickname for Mahomes: Fatrick.Cantrell laughed at it this week. He has known Mahomes since they were kids playing baseball on the same teams in Whitehouse.Mahomes added 15 to 20 pounds this year and redistributed additional weight. When he took the field Saturday at Sun Devil Stadium, listed at 6-foot-3 and 230 pounds, Mahomes looked more linebacker than quarterback. His improved shape coincided with his decision early in 2016 to leave the Tech baseball team after just one season.Patrick struggled with the new reality as the Red Raiders advanced to the College World Series in June.I know it wasnt an easy decision, Cantrell said. Baseball was his first love. But hes going to do whatever he has to do to win.It starts, Mahomes said, with eliminating those ill-advised throws that resurfaced in the fourth quarter at Arizona State. Mahomes threw 15 interceptions last year. Hes always going to improvise on a few plays because of his athleticism, Cantrell said. But after Techs first loss this season, the QB is more intent than ever on making the smart play every time he touches the ball.Its easier said than done, but I can learn from my mistakes, Mahomes said. Really, its just staying with my reads and progressions. Its something I have to get better at every week. Whether were scoring or theyre scoring, I have to take what [the defense is] giving me.According to Kingsbury, Mahomes has already taken big strides this year. Despite the loss last week, in which Mahomes first interception led to a decisive, short-field touchdown for ASU, the fourth-year coach said he expects to see more progress immediately.For the most part, Mahomes has tightened his mechanics. Plus, the chance to work on football year-round for the first time is no small item.I think thats huge, Kingsbury said.The Red Raiders host Louisiana Tech on Saturday, then open the Big 12 with Kansas, Kansas State and West Virginia before Oklahoma visits Lubbock on Oct. 22.Will Mahomes be ready to take the next step before Techs challenging finish, which features TCU, Texas and Oklahoma State after the Sooners? More pressing, will his supporting cast stand a chance to let him run the offense without the need for perfection?If [the defense] can make one or two stops in the right situation, were going to win the game, Mahomes said. We can score any moment.Scoring has never been the problem. But with the Big 12 race seemingly never more wide-open than it is this season, the Red Raiders can get more from Mahomes in 2016 if he tries to do less.Chandler Jones Cardinals Jersey . 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A former lifeguard, rugby prospect and Sacramento State cheerleader whose most cherished work is a Muhammad Ali painting.Meet Team GBs Joe Joyce, one of the favourites to land a gold in the ring at the Rio Olympics.The 30-year-old is as happy waxing lyrical about Picassos Cubism as Cubas pugilists and appears to have lived a more-than-full life already. Hes almost as intriuiging as his inspiration, Ali, was, and a talented artist, in a very different way.I wasnt really a boxing fan as a kid but everyone loves Ali, dont they? Joyce said.It was the messages he brought across, the way he spoke, the courageous stances he took on things and then, of course, his boxing skills. To me, hes been a great icon to look up to, a real role model.Talking at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield, Joyce was among the British Olympians preparing for the Rio Games in a boxing gym dominated by two vast photographs of Ali.One features the young Cassius Clay receiving his light-heavyweight gold medal in Rome 1960. Joyces own portrait of the Greatest is a fiery image of him holding up his hand swathed in boxing tape, with passion in his eyes and a mouth in overdrive.To me, that [guy is a] real inspiration. Every day, said the Englishman.Ali would have liked Joyce, you suspect, even if personality-wise, they would have taken up opposite corners.Celebratory back flips in the ring apart, there is little of the Americans outrageous showmanship in Joyces make-up.However, there is a quiet charisma and the sort of imposing presence that only a 17-stone colossus can radiate.Reflective and laid back when interviewed, Joyce the fighter was called a beast by?Anthony Joshua, Britains holder of the Olympic super-heavyweight title who has gone on as a professional to own the IBF version of the world heavyweight title.Outside the ring I can be very laid back, he said. Yet if youre trying to beat me, to take away what Ive got, my success, Ill want to beat you and Ill leave it all out there in the ring. Im all business there.Theres no great artistic flair with me in the ring. Im probably more mechanical than Ali but Ive only been boxing since I was 22. Sometimes I wish maybe Id started at 18.The reason Joyce didnt start 12 years ago was because his intelligent, artistic bent and all-round sporting talent sent him on so many other journeys of experimentation.Oh, you heard about the cheerleader stuff? he said, when asked to reflect on the semester, during his final year studying at Middlesex University, when he went on exchange to Sacramento State.I wasnt waving pom-poms! he promptly protested. I was chatting to this cheerleader there and she said, Oh, you should come to practice with us.It turned out they were looking for strong blokes and it was a bit like gymnastics. I learned about tumbling and I had to throw the girl up in the air and catch her by her feet.The worst thing about cheerleading is the actual cheerleading bit, all the clapping and cheering lets go team and all that. At the basketball, the players on court were all looking at me, this tall English guy, like, Mate, shouldnt you be out here with us?Joyce probably could have been a decent basketball player, too, such has been his all-round sporting prowess. He was good at karate and kung fu -- Bruce Lee was another of his best paintings -- played under-18s county rugby for Surrey as a lock forward, long jumped and triple jumped to a high standard. He also acted as a swimming instructor.WWhen he saw some guys playing American Football at Londons Lee Valley athletics track during his track and field training, he couldnt resist having a go at that, too, until he got bored with chasing balls around.ddddddddddddNothing on the sporting front, though, tickled Joyce like the moment he had a go at thumping a punchbag in the Middlesex University gym; it was love at first thwack.Asked whether he believes he really is a talented artist, Joyce shrugged: Yeah, Im pretty good actually.Artistically, he is into abstract works and symbolism. The work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the young American street artist became a pop icon before his death at 27 from a heroin overdose, he admires.Joyce is fascinated by iconography, too. Indeed, he once painted a series of portraits of modern-day icons. As well as Ali and Lee, he chose Beyonce, Michael Jackson and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena.The common thread? They got to the very peak of their professions, he said. Boxings the vehicle to take me to the top of a profession.Good judges believe he has a chance. Hes won gold in the Commonwealth Games and European Games; hes beaten Cubas best in Cuba and has stood on the podium at the world championships.Like Joshua and so many others before him, Joyce sees an Olympic gold as the last stop before a lucrative pro career in the heavyweight division.Heavyweights peak in their late 30s so it might be the ideal time to start a pro career after the Games, he said. Ill be well-experienced then, ready to take on the pros and as its a really exciting time for the heavyweight division at the moment -- it could be perfect timing.Inevitably, and maybe a bit tiresomely for Joyce, his name always has seemingly always been linked to that of Joshua, with whom he has enjoyed plenty of lively sparring sessions.Maybe he can punch his way out of the brilliant young world champs shadow, especially after he qualified for Rio by defeating Azerbaijans Magomedrasul Majidov, the last man to beat Joshua, in the European qualifying tournament in Turkey.For the moment, Joyces art ambitions are on hold. He would normally work from a little studio at the flat he shares with his art-loving mum in south London.While he was training and living in the northern English city of Sheffield, though, he admitted: I get ideas for painting and sketches and I even bought a canvas and some paints the other day but then thought, Nah ... I cant have oil paint going on the carpet when Im renting a place!I can continue my career in boxing while Im still young but when thats over and my body cant take the punishment any more, I could still do my masters degree to get my art back going again. Even a beaten up old boxer, he added with a shrug, is able to lift a paint brush.Joyce only had one of his oil paintings put on public display when he was at university. But there was a gallery interested in exhibiting my work somewhere in Europe; it would have been too much to get the paintings there and take myself there too, he said. But, one day, who knows?Its quite hard to make something of yourself in art, sell paintings, make the big bucks. So maybe I could use the success I have in boxing as a vehicle to promote my art.Masterpieces from the hand that knocked over opponents on the road to Olympic and world titles? Maybe people might want to own a Joyce, he said. I might be able to auction it off to the highest bidder. ' ' '