“Man, we needed that.”
Those were Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire’s opening remarks following his team’s 49-28 win over the Houston Cougars on Saturday afternoon in Lubbock. The win improved the Red Raiders to 2-3 in 2023.
It was not an understatement. They did need it.
On the heels of an 8-5 season and a TaxAct Texas Bowl victory in McGuire’s first season at the helm of the Red Raider program in 2022, the team had since failed to meet lofty expectations through four weeks of the 2023 season, punctuated by road losses to both Wyoming and West Virginia.
On Saturday against the Cougars, they needed to take care of business and remind the Red Raider faithful what it feels like to put one in the win column against a team other than Tarleton State. And they had to do it with a backup quarterback against a familiar foe.
Once upon a time, the Red Raiders and Cougars played in the Southwest Conference together from 1972-1995. Since the death of that conference a lot has happened with these two schools –for better and for worse – including, but not limited to, The Forgotten Four, the Mike Leach era, the fall of the original Big East, Patrick Mahomes, construction of TDECU Stadium, conference realignment, Tillman Fertitta, a pair of basketball rejuvenations, soaring NIL deals, a $230m south endzone renovation, and Brett Yormark.
These schools have history. Before he transferred to Houston, Cougars quarterback Donovan Smith started (and finished) two of the Red Raiders’ biggest wins of the season last year at home against No. 25 Texas and…Houston!
This time last year, Smith was amongst the most beloved figures in Lubbock. On Saturday, he was the enemy. Not to mention the fact that Houston head coach Dana Holgorsen cut his teeth at Texas Tech as an assistant under Mike Leach from 2000-2007. The field was littered with familiar faces.
The shootout
Smith’s big-game acumen was on display when he meticulously picked apart the Texas Tech defense on the 12-play, 75-yard opening drive of the game. The drive ended with Smith extending a play by rolling to his right and finding tight end Bryan Henry in the endzone for a six-yard touchdown. After taking the first lead of the game, Smith jawed at his former sideline before making his way back to the Houston sideline.
“After he threw his first touchdown pass and shouted toward our sideline…it was on,” said senior Red Raider defensive tackle Tony Bradford Jr.
With the Red Raiders down 7-0, they were in desperate need of a spark. Drae McCray answered the call on the ensuing kickoff by bobbing and weaving his way past the Cougar special teams for a 100-yard kick-return touchdown. Besides tying up the score, McCray’s score served the invaluable role of getting the raucous crowd at The Jones re-engaged into the game.
The Cougars soon regained the lead when Smith connected with receiver Samuel Brown for his second passing score of the day. Smith’s second touchdown drive needed only six plays to go 75 yards.
Down 14-7, after speculation on whether or not he would even be ready to go, the Red Raiders turned to sophomore quarterback Behren Morton, who was making just the fifth start of the collegiate career. The once-highest rated quarterback recruit (consensus four-star) in school history holds a certain level of love and admiration amongst the Red Raider faithful as his father, James Morton, was the head coach of Monterey High School in Lubbock for 11 years.
Morton had turned in a lackluster performance one week prior on the road against West Virginia in the stead of injured Tyler Shough, completing just 13 of 37 passes for 158 yards and one score. Less inspiring than his four starts in 2022, where Morton completed 56.8% of his passes for 1,117 yards and seven scores.
Before Morton took the field against Houston, Red Raider fans were tossed an extra serving of excitement about the young quarterback from recent five-star Texas Tech-commit Micah Hudson. The class of 2024 Lake Belton High receiver tweeted out Saturday morning a picture of a 2008 copy of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine that graced the late, great Mike Leach on the cover alongside Red Raider quarterback Graham Harrell and receiver Michael Crabtree.
Hudson paired this picture with an edit of the cover with McGuire, himself, and Morton on the cover. As much as the 1-3 record that Red Raider fans woke up with that day still stung, the thought of McGuire leading a new era of Red Raider football in the image of the Leach era with a new hot-shot receiver leading the way still offered excitement.
Morton converted a crucial 3rd-and-9 early in his first possession with a 10-yard strike to Myles Price to keep the drive alive and McGuire’s defense off the field. Later, a seven-yard Tahj Brooks touchdown run would cap off a 12-play, 74-yard drive for Texas Tech. Following yet another touchdown drive by the Cougars on their ensuing possession, Morton responded by firing a dime to Loic Fouonji along the left sideline for a game-tying 25-yard touchdown.
With 7:24 left in the first half, Texas Tech’s defense finally forced a punt from the Cougar offense. Just four plays removed from his receiving touchdown, Fouonji raced past the Houston line and blocked the punt before recovering the loose ball himself and trotting uncontested into the endzone for his second score of the afternoon.
Special teams had been an issue for the Red Raiders during their slow start to the season, but against Houston, it was perhaps their biggest strength.
Soon after, Smith found receiver Dalton Carnes past his man for a 41-yard score to tie the game up at 28 with 2:18 left in the half. In his return to Lubbock, Smith was 20 for 24 with 263 yards and four touchdowns in the first half.
Running their two-minute offense, the Red Raiders were able to get the ball down to the Houston one-yard line with just 47 seconds left in the half. After Houston’s defense forced a 4th and goal, Brooks was finally able to power it in and retake the lead for Texas Tech.
Cougar kicker Jack Martin had the chance to cut into the deficit before the half, but his 49-yard attempt with the strong Lubbock wind at his back doinked wide off of the left upright. His miss brought the high-scoring first half to a merciful end.
The Red Raiders headed into the locker room at halftime boasting a 35-28 lead. At halftime, Texas Tech introduced a number of outstanding individuals into the school’s Hall of Fame, including former head coach Mike Leach.
Leach, the winningest coach in the program’s history, was inducted posthumously after passing away suddenly in 2022. He was survived by his wife and three daughters, all of whom appeared in Lubbock on his behalf as the entire crowd at The Jones gave the family a much-deserved standing ovation in his honor.
With the backdrop of Leach’s 84 wins and the history of Texas Tech’s “Air Raid” offense on center stage at halftime, it was ironically the running game that was the Red Raiders’ bread and butter on Saturday. Brooks and Cam’Ron Valdez each rushed for 106 yards and finished with two and one touchdowns, respectively.
Brooks, two-weeks removed from a career-high 158-yard rushing performance against Tarleton State, eclipsed the 2,000-career rushing yard mark in the game and improved his season rushing total to 523 yards through five games.
The Red Raider offense struck first in the second half when a 54-yard Valdez run set up a Morton 12-yard touchdown pass to Myles Price in the back of the endzone. Price’s touchdown gave Texas Tech the first two-score lead of the game as they went ahead 42-28.
In the second half, after failing to get into any kind of groove in the entire first half, the Texas Tech defense began to shut down the Cougar offensive attack. With just under five minutes remaining in the third quarter, the big defensive line of the Red Raiders stifled Cougar running back Tony Mathis Jr. on a 4th-and-1 in Texas Tech territory.
The turnover on downs would mark the closest that Houston would come to reaching the end zone the rest of the way. With McGuire and Tim DeRuyter’s defense pitching a second-half shutout, the home team cruised to a 49-28 victory in the first-ever Big-12 matchup between Texas Tech University and the University of Houston.
Smith finished the game having completed 29 of 40 passes for 335 yards and four touchdowns in the loss. He also added 59 rushing yards on nine carries.
Morton ended with 14 completions on 22 attempts for 161 yards and two touchdowns. His numbers do not totally do his performance justice, as the sophomore looked significantly more poised and decisive I front of his home fans as opposed to on the road in Morgantown a week prior.
Regional rivalries are dying, but is this an exception?
The fact that this was the first Big 12 matchup between these two schools is not insignificant, and it’s more than just because this was Texas Tech’s first contest against any one of the new Big 12 opponents.
Even though these two teams had played each other in 2021 and 2022, Saturday was still the first time that the Goin’ Band from Raiderland carried with them a University of Houston flag as they did their pregame routine.
With regional rivalries becoming more and more scarce, these two schools from opposite ends of the state have the opportunity to rekindle what once made college football great in the first place. Of the three matches these two teams have played now against each other in the last three seasons, none of them were boring.
Going forward, this could become one of the premiere rivalries that the Big 12 has to offer. A vision that became easier to comprehend after The Athletic’s Justin Williams wrote a piece in early September detailing how Texas Tech’s financial backing is becoming more and more centric around the West Texas oil industry.
“Oil money is not a novel source of big-money boosterism in college sports…but while the transfer portal and name, image and likeness legislation are remodeling college football’s financial and competitive structure,” Williams said, “Tech’s windfall is funding both the old-school facilities arms race and new-school NIL marketplace, part of a broader alignment among deep-pocketed supporters and the administration.
“That Red Raider fandom extends as far as the mesquite-lined towns of Midland and Odessa, part of a West Texas region dubbed the Permian Basin, the largest oil-producing field in America.”
Lubbock and Houston: A possible rising West Texas oil powerhouse against a program that plays within the oil and natural gas capital of the Western world. Houston needs no introduction in this industry, as it houses companies like Exxon, Shell, and Hilcorp among hundreds of others. Sounds like an easy agenda to push; not too much of a stretch. Call it the Oil Rig Rivalry and suddenly we are cooking with – wait for it – oil!
“It’s gonna be us, Baylor, TCU, and them in the new league, and it’s gonna be interesting to see what happens,” Texas Tech offensive coordinator Zach Kittley said. “Are we gonna do divisions or pods or whatever it could be. If that is the case, I assume they would keep the Texas teams together, which means we would probably play them on a yearly basis.
“Definitely could see it being a rivalry and I think it is a good thing. I think Houston left the Southwest Conference and they probably should have been in the Big 12 from the get-go, but probably see it becoming a rivalry for sure.”
Next season, Texas and Texas A&M will be playing in a conference separate from Baylor and Texas Tech, USC and UCLA will be playing in a conference separate from Cal and Stanford, and time will only tell what happens next with conference realignment.
The world of college sports is changing. Regional rivalries are not extinct yet, but they are certainly teetering on critically endangered status. Adapt or die.
In this ever-changing landscape, these two schools have the chance to ignite what once made college football so intoxicating in the first place. Texas Tech Red Raiders v. Houston Cougars. The Hub City v. The Space City. The Permian Basin (even if Lubbock is not quite in it) v. The Gulf Coast.
For better or worse, this is the new Big 12. We are now one game in.
Loading ...