Texas Tech football: Turning points that cost Tech in loss to Zona

Douglas’ Coleman’s personal foul penalty

Other than Jordyn Brooks, safety Douglas Coleman was Tech’s best player Saturday night.  He came up with ten tackles and two interceptions but it was what he did after the second of those picks that had the greatest impact on this game.

With 17 seconds to go in the first half, Coleman snagged a Tate pass and carried the ball out of bounds at the 40-yard-line on Arizona’s sideline.  He then proceeded to jaw at the Wildcats prompting a tongue lashing from referee Mike Defee, who Tech fans know has a rather short fuse when it comes to handing out personal fouls.

As you can see in the video below taken by KMAC’s Eric Kelly, Defee seemed to grab Coleman and attempt to give him a lecture only to throw the flag when Coleman tried to leave for the Tech sideline.  Many Red Raider fans are upset that Defee put his hands on Coleman, to begin with, and feel like this flag was unwarranted.  Of course, only the official and the player know what was said so we will never know if this flag was justified.

But what we are certain of is that it resulted in Tech being pushed back to its own 45 to start the drive.  With only one timeout to work with, the Red Raider offense was unable to get into field goal range and was unable to put any points on the board following this turnover.

With this drive and the drive that ended in the fake field goal, Tech potentially left six points on the field in the first half and could have gone into the locker room tied with Arizona.  How different would this game have felt under those circumstances?

Six more points would have prevented Arizona from ever taking a two-score lead thus keeping them from being able to attack Tech’s shorthanded defensive line as they did on the final two drives of the game when they ran the ball 18-straight times to melt the clock.

But because Douglas Coleman decided that it was more important to run his mouth at the Arizona sideline, the Red Raiders missed out on three points that may have been significant since scoring just before halftime has a tremendous impact on a game’s momentum.  Whether or not Defee was at fault for putting his hands on Coleman and whether or not the flag was the right course of action should not have been an issue because Tech’s senior safety should have shut his mouth and let the fact that he just picked off his second pass of the night speak for itself.

During the offseason, Wells talked about how personal fouls and pre or post-snap penalties would not be tolerated.  Saturday night, we saw how devastating those types of mistakes can be in a close game and why he must work to minimize them.