The Texas Tech football program will be looking to notch its seventh win all-time against Oklahoma this Saturday night in Lubbock.
Saturday night, Texas Tech will attempt to accomplish something that has historically been one of the toughest things for a Texas Tech football team to do; beat Oklahoma. No team in the Big 12 has had more success against the Red Raiders than the Sooners who hold a 19-6 edge in the overall series.
OU’s winning percentage of .760 against Tech is the best of any Big 12 team just edging out West Virginia (.750) and Texas (.746). In every other series against Big 12 teams, the Red Raiders hold the all-time lead with the exception of the series against Kansas State which is tied 9-9.
But the series against Oklahoma, while being rather lopsided, has still produced some fascinating games. When Texas Tech has been able to beat the Sooners, the games have been noteworthy or memorable for a myriad of reasons.
The teams first met in 1992 in Lubbock with the Sooners winning 34-9. OU would win two more games in the series before Tech scored its first win thanks to a 22-12 win in Norman.
OU would win in 1997 and 1998 before heading to Lubbock in 1999 for one of the more memorable games in Texas Tech football history. In what would be the final game of legendary head coach Spike Dykes’ career and the first career start for redshirt freshman QB Kliff Kingsbury, Tech would rally from a 21-13 halftime deficit for a 38-28 win.
That Oklahoma team, with Bob Stoops at the helm and future Heisman Trophy winner Josh Heupel at QB would go on to win the 2000 national championship reeling off 21 consecutive wins after their 1999 trip to Lubbock. And the offensive coordinator for OU that day was Mike Leach, who would return to Lubbock the next season as the successor to Dykes.
Tech would drop five straight to the Sooners before another memorable win. In 2005, running back Taurean Henderson scored on a one-yard touchdown run as time expired for a 23-21 win in Lubbock. The play, which was reviewed and upheld, capped a wild final drive that saw the Red Raiders convert a controversial 4th down play on a tipped pass caught by Danny Amendola only to be reviewed to determine whether he had gained the necessary yardage for a first down.
That win would begin a streak of three-consecutive home wins over OU for Texas Tech. That included the 2007 game where Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree announced their arrival on the national football scene by knocking off the No. 4 Sooners 34-27.
More from Wreck'Em Red
- Texas Tech football: Red Raider fans need to know about these Mountaineers
- Texas Tech football: Red Raiders land first commit for class of 2025
- Texas Tech football: Why have the Red Raiders struggled on the road under McGuire?
- Texas Tech football: Why the Red Raiders can compete for a Big 12 title
- Texas Tech football: Plenty of questions remain as conference play arrives
After Tech’s biggest win ever in the series, a 41-13 drubbing in 2009, Tech would again pull off a huge upset in 2011. In what would prove to be the high-point of the lowly Tommy Tuberville era, Seth Doege and the Red Raiders would march into Norman and come out with a 41-38 win over No. 3 OU to snap the Sooners’ 39-game home winning streak.
Unfortunately, that is the last time Tech has managed a win over OU. Winning the last six games in the series by an average score of 49.8 – 32.1, the Sooners have reasserted their dominance after seven-year period when the teams alternated wins.
Of course, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge two of the most memorable OU wins in the series. In 2008, Sam Bradford and the Sooners put an end to Texas Tech’s national title hopes via a dominating 65-21 win in Norman. And two years ago, Pat Mahomes and Baker Mayfield staged one of the greatest shootouts in college football history as they combined for 1,364 yards of total offense in a 66-59 OU win in Lubbock.
Many are expecting another shootout this week as two of the nation’s most prolific offenses square off. That would not be out of the ordinary in this series as in every year since 2007, the winning team has eclipsed the 40-point mark while only twice in that time has the losing team scored fewer than 20 points.
Eventually, Texas Tech must figure out how to beat OU with regularity again. The Sooners are the premier program in the Big 12 and until Tech can prove to be capable of competing with them, they will remain stuck in the mire of mediocrity that has defined the program for a decade.