Texas Tech football falls to Baylor; misses out on bowl game

The Texas Tech football team dropped its final game of the season to Baylor Saturday denying the Red Raiders the opportunity to play in a bowl game.

On August 30, 2013, the Kliff Kingsbury era of the Texas Tech football program began with a win over SMU in Dallas.  Saturday, that era likely came to an end just 30 miles away when Texas Tech lost to Baylor 35-24 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

The loss dropped Texas Tech to 5-7 on the year and ended any hopes the program had for a bowl birth.  Meanwhile, by picking up its sixth win, Baylor earned a trip to the postseason just one year after going 1-11 in head coach Matt Rhule’s first campaign.

With Jett Duffey and Alan Bowman both ruled out, Texas Tech quarterback McLane Carter made his first start since week one when he left the Ole Miss game with a high ankle sprain.  The injury never appeared to heal fully, especially after it was aggravated in the October 11th game at TCU.

And on the first drive of the game Saturday, Carter was sacked and appeared to be hobbled once again though he did stay in the game to complete the drive by finding Ja’Deion High for a 54-yard touchdown.  Carter went to the locker room during the ensuing defensive series but returned before missing a snap.

However, it was clear that his ankle was a hindrance for the remainder of the day.  The junior completed just 21 of 37 passes for 247 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions.  It was the first start at Texas Tech that Carter has been able to complete after being pulled in his first career start last season at Texas and leaving the Ole Miss game in the first quarter this year.

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But as the game wore on, Carter’s inability to push the ball down field became problematic.  Whether it was due to his ankle or his below-average arm strength, the lefty was not able to make big plays with in the air as the Baylor defense began tp play tight coverage and jump routes having no fear of being beat deep.

For most of the afternoon, Baylor double-teamed Texas Tech’s leading receiver Antoine Wesley holding him to just four catches for 35 yards.  It was the second-lowest receiving total this year for Wesley who entered the game second in the nation in receiving.

Throughout the afternoon, the Texas Tech offense seemed stuck in neutral.  Tech scored only seven points over the final 42 minus of the game after a Demarcus Felton 7-yard touchdown run put the Red Raiders up 17-14 early in the second quarter.

Unfortunately, the Red Raider defense was unable to pick up the slack.  Facing an offense coming off a 9-point outing last week against TCU, Tech’s defense gave up 478 total yards to Charlie Brewer and the Bears.

Brewer, whose older brother Michael played at Texas Tech from 2011-2013, threw for 308 yards and three touchdowns while being picked off once.  In all, he found ten receivers with Chris Platt leading the way with six catches for 114 yards.

With Baylor up only 28-24 in the fourth quarter, Tech had an opportunity to turn the tide but Brewer hit Denzel Mims for a 16-yard touchdown to restore the 11-point lead that Baylor had held for most of the second half.

And when Brewer was not torching the Texas Tech corners, as almost every team on the 2018 schedule did, sophomore running back John Lovett was busy racking up 128 yards and a touchdown on 28 carries.

Texas Tech had its opportunities to put more points on the board but failed to score on two possessions that both began at the Baylor 38 .  Early in the second quarter, Jah’Shawn Johnson corralled a Brewer pass to set the Red Raiders up on the positive side of mid-field.  But Tech would not gain a first down on the ensuing drive, which ended in a punt.

In the second half, De’Quan Bowman returned a kickoff 68 yards to the Baylor 38 but the drive would end in a 39-yard Clayton Hatfield missed field goal keeping the Red Raiders from closing the gap to eight points.

The miss was Hatfield’s first since the Oklahoma State game and only his second of the season.  It also snapped his school record streak of 13-consecutive makes and prevented him from breaking the program record for career field goals (he tired the mark of 50 career makes earlier in the game).

It was that kind of day for Texas Tech and Kliff Kingsbury.  Now, it appears that Kingsbury is on his way out at his alma mater.  With just a 35-40 career record and a 19-35 mark in Big 12 play, the former Red Raider quarterback has failed to lead his team to a bowl game in three of his six seasons on the job.

If, as virtually everyone expects, Kingsbury is relieved of his duties, his tenure in Lubbock will have come full circle.  What began with such high hopes and unprecedented fanfare on a sweltery late August night in Dallas just five years ago ended with a whimper in Arlington Saturday afternoon in front of a crowd that will be dwarfed by the turnout for the next high school football playoff game to be held in AT&T Stadium.  Neither the season nor Kingsbury’s run were supposed to end this way.